Dave Webb: 	0:04	I'm Dave Webb and you're listening to RecruiterCast.

[music]

Kenneth Bedwell:	0:10	" Invariably, these people are going to ask me for a Word version of my resume, which is not SEOd. This thing is a chronologically correct description of all of the gigs that I've had with the value that I provided while I was there. So it's intended for a hiring manager to be impressed as opposed to a search engine to find me and put me on top because I've got Kubernetes less than 500 characters from the first character. All these search engines that will get you to get your resume to the ATS, that I believe is SEO. I don't believe that your actual Word doc resume that gets handed to the ATS is anything that you should try to game."

Dave: 	0:56	"That's Ken Bedwell. Ken is an expert in what he does. What he does doesn't really matter. He's an expert at it and whatever you do, you should be an expert as well. Ken will talk today about what it takes to be an expert at something. How many hours does it take to get there? Why are you waiting to get started?†Ken is a big data expert. He understands computer science at a level that most of us cannot even comprehend. He's going to talk to us today about what your resume looks like to a computer, how to get found, how to market yourself and most importantly, how to land your next job."

Kenneth: 	1:30	"We had recruiters just bringing in guys that had every single thing we needed on their resume. This 2001, they had 10 years of job and experience, they had things that were impossible. That's amazing. It is mind-blowing. I got tired of talking to these people and so I put together this test where they had no access to the internet but they can bring backend programming books and people were just lining up two or three at a time to take this test and they are cheating and†it was madness, but it was pre-ATS way of trying to game the system.† So, I actually got the mechanical stone ages version of this where people were trying to send me resumes, they were garbage and when you talk to the guy you would find out immediately and the trust in the vendors that were bringing me these guys dropped to zero, which is exactly what you're saying. Credibility is everything and it's very easily lost and very hard to regain. "

Dave: 	2:30	"Did you catch that? When a bad resume gets submitted to a hiring manager and you waste their time, credibility instantly goes out the window for both the candidate and the vendor who submitted the candidate to the hiring manager. Good luck ever getting a callback or a placement with that hiring manager again. What Kenneth is saying is that the ATS is a tool. "

Recorded Voice	2:52	What is an ATS?

Dave:	2:54	" Oh, yeah. I guess we should clear that up first. ATS, stands for Applicant Tracking System or Applicant Tracking Software, depending on who you ask. It is a software application that enables the electronic handling of recruitment and hiring needs. It publishes jobs, handles the influx of resumes and then allows a recruiter to sort through those resumes to find the best candidate for the job as efficiently and quickly as possible.† The ATS is a tool. We're going to use this tool to filter out people before we send them over to a hiring manager. That's going to save you vendor credibility, it's going to save you time and it's going to make you look good. Most importantly, it's going to get the right person in the right seat, doing the right job as fast as possible.† In this episode, we'll be talking with Ken about resume SEO. SEO is Search Engine Optimization. It is a real thing or is it? How should you structure your resume? Should you have more than one resume? Ken will answer all of these questions for you. Let's say the ATS is the reason you're not getting the job but†somehow you fool it. What are you going to do with the next phase of the interview cycle when you're face to face with a person, an expert hiring you for a job who can see your facial expressions and ask you questions off the cuff? How is it going to look when you can't answer those questions? Is the myth that the ATS is really a black hole of resumes' true? We don't think so and we have personal experience with this. "
"Maybe if you can understand the ATS like Ken and I see it, we can help you see how your resume should be created and how you are marketing yourself to both the ATS, the job boards, and the recruiters. Let us help you get callbacks and land that next job. Finally, let's say you've done your SEO and you understand the ATS and you've landed an in-person interview, are you prepared or did you fake your way in? We sure hope not. We're going to talk about all of these and more with Ken Bedwell on this episode of Recruiter Cast.†"

"I'm Dave Webb, CEO, and Co-Founder of Bright Move. For over 25 years my job has been to learn all of the ins and outs of the recruiting industry and then write the software that makes it all happen. I know who to talk to and what to ask them. We have the information that you cannot get anywhere else. So get ready to learn the secrets that will give you an advantage as a recruiter, job seeker or business owner. It's time for Recruiter Cast.†"

Advertisement	5:27	Recruiter Cast is brought to you by Bright Move. The most innovative applicant tracking system built with the recruiter and candidate in mind. Learn more at brightmove.com.

Dave:	5:38	" Ken, welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself. "

Kenneth: 	5:41	"Thanks for having me, David. I have been doing software development for 25 years. I've probably known Dave for almost 20. Is that right?"

Dave: 	5:51	I think so.

Kenneth: 	5:52	"Jeez, we were old. "

Dave: 	5:54	The 90's.

Kenneth:	5:54	" Yeah, good Lord. These days I'm mostly doing backend development but I think I would consider myself full-stack with the ability to do hardware, club, all of it. Just enough to be dangerous and just about everything. "

Dave: 	6:10	I can testify first hand that Ken can take a project from an idea to a deployment by himself without any help. I've seen it done. I've seen him design the whole technology group at large enterprise organizations. He has a wide range of skills that is hard to find in less experienced employees and in general employees. The recruiters have a term for guys like Ken and that's a purple squirrel.†
"Now you're thinking to yourself, I've never seen a purple squirrel and that's kinda the gist of the name. It's a freak of nature. It's something that you don't see very often and when recruiters find one, it's like a gold mine. They can call probably anyone of their clients and get that purple squirrel contractor employee placed usually the same day and we've seen that over and over and again with Ken and with some other guys at our network. With Ken's background in technology, big data, human resources, recruiting, text analysis, search, we're going to talk about the ATS and what it does with your resume. This is one of those episodes that's going to be really good for job seekers and for recruiters because recruiters have a responsibility using the ATS and job seekers. You're going to have to know what kind of technologies stands between you and the in-person interview. Take a little bit of responsibility for not getting that in-person interview. It's not the applicant tracking system necessarily. It could be, you're not the right fit for that job. It could be your resume and we'll talk about all those things today.†"
"Ken, there's a lot of articles floating around about resume SEO.† Is that real?"

Kenneth: 	8:01	"In the last ten years, I've probably had 15 contracting gigs at fortune 500 companies startups with varying technologies that I've used professionally. I would say that my technique for landing all of these high paying jobs has been two-fold. I do believe in Linkedin SEO. I think that's absolutely a thing. I have a pros description up at the top of what my purpose in professional life is. I have accurate and chronologically correct descriptions of where I've been and what I've done. I have a section at the bottom that literally says, ""Search engines love key words so, here is all the stuff that I worked on professionally"", and it's a comma-separated paragraph of all the tech that I used. Just like a website this drives traffic to my phone of people that are already pre-qualified. I also say in there that I only work remote which has been entirely true for the last decade. I haven't gone into anybody's office except Dave Webb's today in the last 10 years. People that call me with remote gigs, I know they've already been pre-qualified by looking at Linkedin.†"
"Now, invariably these people are going to ask me for a Word version of my resume which is not SEOd. This thing is a chronologically correct description of all the gigs that I've had with the value that I provided while I was there. It's intended for a hiring manager to be impressed as opposed to a search engine to find me and put me on top because I've got Kubernetes less than 500 characters from the first character. Right?†"
"So, all these search engines that will get you to get your resume to the ATS, that I believe is SEO. I don't believe that your actual Word doc resume that gets handed to the ATS is anything that you should try to game because ultimately it's going to parse you out. But if you are doing it the way I'm doing it where recruiters are finding you and placing you in front of the hiring manager then you've already been found and your resume should accurately reflect what it is you're trying to do. "

[music]

Dave:	10:27	" Strategy one is, get found using Google or the applicant tracking system. A lot of the applicant tracking systems today link social profiles with your resume that the recruiters have come across. Also, pulling information from your social profiles to create what we call an enhanced profile. Once you get that initial email that, ""Hey, I got this great job, starts in December, it's in Minneapolis, hope you love three feet of snow, can we get you to relocate from Florida?"" Before you get that job that we've all been recruited for."

Kenneth:	11:06	 I just-- I can't wait.

Dave: 	11:08	[laughs]

Kenneth: 	11:09	Ski boots ready.

Dave:	11:11	" Before you even get that job or when you get that initial email asking if you're interested, that's when you respond with the more human and emotional description of the things that you did and your soft skills and the things that you want the recruiter to read about and think you're going separate you from everyone else that has just the hard skills. "

[music]

Kenneth:	11:36	" I'd tailor the resume for the job descriptions. My back and forth and this not gaming so, I'm going to make a distinction here in a minute. I get the offer to move to Minneapolis, scenic Minneapolis. I'm sure it's lovely. It's just not for me. The next thing I do is ask for a job description and they've trying to play coy and get me to talk to them on the phone, but I don't even talk to anybody until I get a job†description. If it's remote and sounds interesting and fits in my wheelhouse, it's something that I've done in the past and can do in the future and let's say it's more of a managerial job, then the chronologically correct, factually accurate stanzas in my resume are going to be worded in such a way that people that are hiring for a manager are going to find that valuable. If I'm pure tech job, then those same things are†going to†be worded in such a way that it emphasizes the skills and the things that I've done and the value that I brought. Tuning a resume for the eventual reader is different than gaming the idea so, at no point I might†going to†say, ""Oh, this is an oracle job"", and I've never done an oracle before, let me just throw a bunch of oracle stuff in there and get the job and figure it out as I go. I'm not a believer in fake it until you make it. I'm a big believer in, you should have already made it if you're†going to†be applying for the thing that you're doing. It creates a chicken and egg problem but [chicken crow sound] if you get enough experience then you're†going to†be able to try new things and get additional things on your resume but at no point should you use a new job to try to do something that's just widely different than what you've done in the past."

Dave:	13:13	" Right, because your career is a long game. "

Kenneth:	13:16	 Absolutely.

Dave:	13:17	" I can see as a recruiter and a hiring manager and as a CEO, once the trust has been violated chances of future employment go to zero immediately. "

Kenneth:	13:29	 Immediately.

Dave:	13:30	 Yeah.

Kenneth: 	13:31	"Yeah. I'm only as good as my last couple of gigs. I do a lot of hired gun-type work where them getting brought in to do things that are more complicated or hard or would need a whole team of people that do the various things that I've done in the past and they just want it done quickly and if I blow a couple of this in a row because I wanna use this job to learn MongoDB or something obscure, there wouldn't be more gigs coming after 'cause I think the world is smaller than we think. The world is significantly smaller than we think it is. "

[music]

Advertisement 	14:05	"Recruiter Cast is brought to you by Bright Move. The most innovative applicant tracking system built with the recruiter and candidate in mind. Be sure to check out Bright Move on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin @brightmove. Visit us on the web at brightmove.com."

[music]

Dave: 	14:25	"Before a lot of the technology we had here, a bad hire would get hired over and over and over again even in all the same places in a locale like a city and the damage is done and if we can avoid that let's use the technology for good in that case. "

Kenneth: †	14:44	"When David and I have actually met at Bank of America in around 2001, the project that I was on was the only game in town. This is the dot com bubble had popped. Bank of America was, uh, hired me to run the technology part of a big project, who cares what it was but we needed to hire, I want to say it was like 20 software developers yesterday. Every recruiter in town was just licking their chops and because I was a 26-year-old tech lead which-- it's great in Silicon Valley but not so much in Jacksonville."
"Anyway, we had recruiters just bringing in guys that had every single thing we needed on their resumes. This 2001, they had ten years of jobs and experience, they had things that were impossible and that's amazing. It's mind-blowing. I got tired of talking to these people and so I put together this test where they had no access to the internet but they can bring backend programming books and people were just lining up two or three at a time to take this test and they are cheating and it was madness but it was pre-ATS way of trying to game the system. I actually got the mechanical stone ages version of this where people were trying to send me resumes, they were garbage and when you talk to the guy you would find out immediately and the trust in the vendors that were bringing me these guys dropped to zero, which is exactly what you're saying. "

Dave: 	16:22	Yup.

Kenneth: 	16:23	Credibility is everything and it's very easily lost and very hard to regain.

Dave:	16:29	 I think that's a great message for the recruiters listening. Is that the hiring managers know that you debrief the candidates after the first one interviews. We know sometimes you send them the ringer to take one for the team and come back with all of the questions and research of the answers and you might even give them a hundred bucks to do that. Sorry to let the cat out of the bag but--

Kenneth: 	16:50	"Yeah, I know. "

Dave: 	16:51	"Honesty is the best policy and as a recruiter, individually or as a vendor in the company you represent you can get a black mark on your name with an organization by doing some shady stuff."

Kenneth:	17:04	 And no amount of donuts and koozies and t-shirts is going to get your next bad job or get hired. It's just not†going to†happen. I had a banned list on my desk of companies that I wouldn't deal with because they've already blew it--

Dave: 	17:17	Yeah.

Kenneth:	17:18	" And the guys that made it-- the technology guys that passed the test, I'm still in contacts with half of them to this day and the companies that actually brought me these folks, some of those vendors have placed me in this purple squirrel gigs in the last 10 years. This relationship if you can continue to be ethical and you can continue to keep that trust and operate in above-board kind of way then it's†going to†be profitable and I have the people that were on my banned list, I've never seen again. You know. So, it really goes to show that operating in a way that's above board and respectable is the only way to go. "

[music]

Dave: 	17:57	"We've heard that theme throughout a lot of our†interviews for this Podcast and I'm sure listeners will be able to identify those as they listen to some of the other episodes. I'm kind of the same way. The hiring managers that hired me, the co-workers that I work with, the ones that were there as a true representation of what they could do. I'm still-- not only co-workers and contacts with today but usually friends kind of like the relationship that Ken and I have. I want to circle back around to something. Ken talked about the ethics of everybody involved. He also talked about how multiple resumes and saying that he wasn't gaming the system by that and I wanted to touch on that topic because once you get a certain amount of experience especially if you've kind of changed directions in your career a couple of times, you want to make sure you have the right resume for the job you're looking for, not necessarily all of the jobs that you've ever had. So, Ken and I started out as junior programmers. Hopefully, everybody does in programming and now we're senior programmers or even worst, maybe we're managers that don't get to do any work 'cause we're doing spreadsheets but we're trying not to do that. I'll give you an example. When I first got out of college, my first job was writing PL/SQL code which was a procedural language in oracle. This is dawn of the web. They even made it where you could write web pages out of PL/SQL. I know that sounds obscene. "
"Google it and you'll find out I'm not lying. A week ago, maybe two weeks ago, I got a call from a recruiter in town asking me if I was interested in a PL/SQL programming gig for a large insurance company to which I laugh, explained to her why it was funny and told her, ""You know, I have a software company, I've been a CEO for a long time now and I haven't touch PL/SQL in forever."" Two-fold there. "

Kenneth: 	19:56	Can you refer me to somebody in your network that may be a SQL forms developer from 2001? That's usually the next thing that comes out of their mouths.

Dave:	20:03	" That was the next question and I told her, ""I'm sorry that I had been out of contact with all those people for 20 years."" The point is not to take the opportunity to make fun of the recruiter's mistake but maybe making a teaching opportunity for recruiters. I learn this myself when I was recruiting sort of the people who work for our staffing company at that time and then we hear it still as an ATS vendor. The recruiter has a responsibility to read the resume. The job seeker has the responsibility to make sure it's accurate and up to date and if both people do those things that first conversation or that first interaction shouldn't be embarrassing or funny. It should be pretty honest and authentic and about a real job opportunity."
"So†I'll let Ken talk a little bit about why piggyback off for my example or some personal experiences. His resume today might be gear toward big data, management and creation of teams, building out infrastructure from the ground up, and not coming in and doing bug fixes on a 20-year-old COBOL Application in an industry that he has no experience in. So, Ken."

Kenneth: 	21:07	"At this point in my career I get to kind of pick what I work on. I've got enough references, I've got enough experience, provable experience that I get enough at-bats with recruiters that I can kind of pick and choose what it is that I am working on. If I decide-- So, I've constantly getting literal request and David and I talked about Minnesota but it's actually not far from the truth. Come to see Nick Des Moines, relocate of course for a three-week or a three-month contract doing job in Oracle for an insurance company.†"
"There is literally nothing desirable about that. The link at the gig, the tech that I'd be working on, the industry that I don't know or the fact that I'd have to uproot me and all five of my kids, to go to Des Moines for three months.†"
"In order to preserve that kind of†discretion and ability to chart my own course, I need to be able to make sure the gigs that I'm picking are appropriate. The way I look at it is, like David said before, ""You get found. You and the recruiter agree that you're a good fit for the position"", and then know that you're going to be one of three or four or 10 guys that they look at. That means that once you evaluate the job description, your resume is going to go through an ATS but you really want the guy that is reading it, the hiring manager under the real end, to almost make it his idea that you're the guy. So, you're a perfect fit because you've read the resume, you can truthfully do all that stuff and now you're in a competition with a very small set of people that probably just pulled something off of their hard drive and send it directly to recruiter. You have an opportunity at this point to tailor, not lie, not game but tailor what it is that's read about you to that job, and to that company, and to that-- Think about it as you write that, you're writing it for that hiring manager and you want him to read this and say, ""That's the guy."" Because they are busy people. The phase that which they filter through these resumes is shockingly quick. ""Oh this guy, he had 10 years in management"", and I'll get back in that example in a minute. ""This guy is a VP"" [swoosh sound]. ""This guy hasn't done job in two years"" [swoosh sound]. Because they are trying to find the guy that's perfect. So, you have to write your thing in a such a way that it's perfect.†"
"That VP example, I was a Vice President at a publicly-traded web hosting company for years. I went out on my own to go run free as a purple squirrel in the woods. Part of that process and the learning that I had in the first six months is that I wasn't getting the traction I wanted. I discovered it's because the last gig that I had was this Vice President of Product† Development (24:00)†with 30 people working for me. I immediately change that to Architect. My title said Vice President of Product Development. That's what I was in that company but what I did was Architect so I said, ""Architect. So, that was the truth."""
"I ran teams, people like that. They don't like Vice Presidents if you're going to be doing programming jobs. So, absolutely tune your resume to what they're looking for because you were"
 trying to be the perfect fit of the 10 people that they have to sort through.

[music]

Advertisement	24:38	"Be sure to check out RecruiterCast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn @recruitercast."

Dave: 	24:25	"Just like the job is marketed to the candidates when you get into that final round and marketing yourself to the hiring manager, nothing wrong with that and it's really what you should do if you really want the job."

Kenneth:	24:57	" You're at sales. I mean, the degree that what you're in sales increases the more senior you are. If I'm a Senior Software Developer that's†going to†build the whole thing for you from hardware to connectivity to the app, I'm†going to†do all the react development for you, you're going to pay. I'm selling you a high-end car, I'm selling you something very expensive, I'm trying to talk you out of a ton of money, a ton of time and you're taking the risk on me, it's a sales job.†"
"Back when I was a Junior Developer, many years ago, it was less of a sales job. They needed a guy that could type, show up on time and wouldn't blow up their stuff.† Because they had guys like I am now directing my steps and if I could come in there and convince this guy that I was at least reliable and knew what I said I'd knew how to do-- They knew that I was a junior guy and I wasn't going to knock their socks off. But the more senior you get, the more high-level job you're working for, the more important it is to essentially sell, and you've got one page of a Word doc to do it. So don't send out the same resume to everybody and don't game the system."

Dave: 	26:11	"I would even go so far as to say when you're first entering the workforce, you're more of a commodity than a luxury car to use Ken's example and you're really selling yourself on the differentiators as a person in your soft skills. Once you get 15, 20 plus years of experience and you are asking for a lot more money, you're selling yourself with a value proposition rather than a differentiator."
"At that point, they'll hire some pretty quirky people if you can get the job done and kind of hold it together for a couple of months."

Kenneth: 	26:46	"Yeah. And I think that's market dependent as well. We're in a hot job market right now and I could wear full cowboy get up and act like a crazy person and I'll probably still continue to get these jobs. But when the market has reversed then it really puts a premium, it puts even more of a premium on what I'm talking about because that competition of your applicants, 10 guys for some kind of high-level software development job. And now it's 20 or 50 because the job market is not as hot. It's easy pickings right now but that's going to turn and you're ethics, the last two jobs you worked on, what you know and then how you sell yourself to finish it all off are even more important."

Dave: 	27:30	"Now you can really showcase the things you work on publicly, projects that you contribute that help the community that you're involved in, how important is it to include links to things like that on your resume or on LinkedIn? And would you do that at first stage or the second stage that you're describing?"

Kenneth:	27:51	" In spite of its importance right now, it's surprising how few people you see that actually have something that is appreciable online. †If you have a blog worth more than one article, it didn't have for three years ago and you got a wild hair to make a blog and here's my blog, if that's all you've got then don't put that out there but if you got something you're actively maintaining then that is a nice sample of your writing skill.†"
"I actually did a talk last year in a local software development conference called Code on the Beach and I am not a public speaker. It was actually not that bad. I got good feedback from it and I linked that on LinkedIn. Invariably, every recruiter that talks to me that is serious said, ""I watched your talked and it's pretty impressive and I'm†going to†show that to the hiring manager"". If you just have the straight LinkedIn plus resume, that's what everybody is doing. But if you actually got something out there that you can show, that might be for software, open-source contributions, if you're a Marketing Person show your blog, show a sample of your work, if you're a Graphic Designer there better be a sample of your work out there that we can look at. If you don't have those that just brings you back closer to the rest of the pack and what you're trying to do is stand out. Stand out and get hired. Anything you can do that can help. I think it's important, especially given the-- it gets a lot of press but there's relatively low number of people that are doing it. If you are going to do that and stand out then, by all means, it's definitely helpful."

Dave:	29:26	" I think this is a good time to go back and talk about the applicant tracking system myth that it's a black hole. Because the things that you've shared as about the hiring manager and the job seeker, I think we are going to be invaluable to people who either listen to this and say, ""Yes, that reinforces the way I've always felt, I'm not alone in the world"", or people that don't quite understand why it is they can't get over that first hurdle of the first interview or the first job."
Let's dispel the myth that there is this monstrous piece of software written by people like me and Ken and it's [sound effect] sole job is to crush your soul and make sure you never get a job interview. Is the ATS really a black hole or is it a tool that's not going away? Is it part of the game that we have to play so we just need to spend a little time and investment in learning how it works?

Kenneth:	30:19	" It's not going away. More automation. The world is never going to go to less automation. I think the ease at which we can automate things is only going to increase. The amount of things that are going to be automated is increased and I think we can safely bet that computers making decisions about which people rise to the top is going to be-- not a problem, I always look at problems as opportunities, but an opportunity for companies to be more efficient about who they hire and opportunity for the people that are getting hired to differentiate themselves."
"It's possible that you apply to something online, your resume goes into, what you appear to be a black hole. It's possible that the organization that is using the ATS is the problem. If you have personal experience where you apply to that dream job at Company X and X never gets back to you, they may not have sufficient-- They've got an ATS but they may not have sufficiently capable to separate the wheat from the chaff in such a way that they can actually get to everybody."
"You may be the right candidate. They may be either using the wrong software or the organization is just not doing it right. I would argue that the ATS is rarely the problem, the use of an ATS is really the problem. The problem is the organization on the back end may have the processes are not in place to be able to accommodate everywhere how to apply."

Dave:	31:44	" If I could throw in an analogy, you're saying that if a bridge falls down it's not the concrete fault?"

Kenneth:	31:49	 Right.

[music]

Advertisement 	31:51	Recruitecast is brought to you by Bright Move. The most innovative applicant tracking system. Built with the recruiter and candidate in mind. Learn more at brightmove.com.

[music]

Dave:	32:04	" I would like to just ask you about what I call social separation. I know my hiring managers, we do a lot of things when we can applicants, we narrow them down, we use a great ATS to get down to that top 10. We do some personality assessments, DISC, Enneagram, those are both great once if you want to really learn a little bit more about someone's core personality and whether they will be good for the role that you are recruiting for."
"Then we go on facebook and we find out what people don't mind telling the world about themselves and what they do on the weekends and why they're not going to be to work on Monday mornings, probably. Talk a little bit about, how do you do this? Do you keep your work and personal, social accounts separate?"

Kenneth: 	32:54	"100%. If I don't want my boss reading it and making decisions about or any bosses that I may have in the next 10 years, reading it and making decisions about it then it's not going online. I think a lot of people are not following that. Some examples are exactly what you said. How you behave on a weekend. I've got nothing wrong with talking about politics on LinkedIn, not LinkedIn, but on Facebook or Twitter or anything like that but, expect to have it read back to you. If it's not something that is okay in polite conversation then you probably shouldn't put it online."
"I think the degradation of public discourses is obvious and clear to everybody but you're going to have it read back to you and if not then somebody is going to read it and make a judgment call about you. If there is three people that are vying for a job and you're all essentially the same person on skill-wise, experience-wise, how much money you're asking for, what your capabilities are and all your personality stuff and you've got one person who, either silent or generally positive online,†you got a one person who's not, is obviously and inarguably demonstrating things online that can be detrimental to the company that's hiring for, that person is going to lose. Your online presence is never going away even if you delete it. I think there's probably evidence that it's never going away. So be judicious on what you say online. That's what I told my kids all the time. It's second nature to my teenagers to have 10 different ways to communicate socially with their friends and my council is always just very very judicious about what you put online because people are reading it and it ain't going away."

Dave:	34:37	 I think it's safe to say that most employers don't care what their employees do when they're not at work as long as it doesn't affect them coming to work.

This is the part where I try to summarize everything that's been said and give you that compact compressed information pocket that you can take with you onto the world so here it is.
"Ken is an expert at Computer Science big data and because of that, he's been an expert at applying to jobs and getting jobs for 25 plus years. What Ken is saying is you have to market yourself, you are in sales. When you go and get a job you have to sell yourself and if you're not you're the disadvantage because everybody else applying for that job should be or are selling themselves.†"
"Catering your resume that the job you want. There is nothing wrong with having more than one resume, just make sure they're all accurate and they're all truthful and you can answer to the claims you've made on the resume about your job experience. Don't put on there that you've done something that you haven't done because I guarantee you, some hiring manager will ask you about that experience.†"
"Once you do that, you're going to find that you get the right callbacks from good companies. The ATS isn't a black hole, the ATS is a tool that helps recruiters find you if you are the right person for that job. If you're the right match for that job. Take the callbacks seriously, be prepared for your interviews. Don't just wake up and roll†out of bed at 8:55 for a 9 o'clock interview. Do your homework the night before. Take notes, use your iPad or your notepad and just be ready. Have some questions ready for the hiring manager at the end of the interview."
"Really most importantly is just be true to yourself, apply to a job that you're going to be happy doing day in and day out. That's going to show through. It's going to build your reputation in getting the next job. It's going to be so simple that if you do such a good job you may not have to update your resume again. You might be surprised how the next job and the next job just keep finding you without you having to do your service."
So invest the time upfront and we wish you all the best of luck in your job search.

Dave:	36:41	 And for the lighter part of the podcast we have some fun exit questions. Tell us the most awkward interviews you've ever had and why. And since you've played both roles I'll let you pick as the interviewer or the interviewee.

Kenneth: 	36:56	"Interviewer. I was young and cocky. I had a bunch of people working for me. I always made it a practice that if you put it on the resume, it's fair game. There's an obscure academic computer language called LISP, not a speech impediment but a computer language. I'm a big fan, people think this is hilarious but I love it. I'm not an expert in it because I'm not, but some guy put LISP on there -- I think he was trying to impress me and I asked him LISP questions and he kept making things up and we just kept going. This went on for 10 minutes because I have a high tolerance for pain. He wrote-- we went to the whiteboard and he managed to write a bunch of JAVA script up there. I had a good time with that one."
"I just kept it going, David's tact is if it's going off the rails, end it quickly for all involved. I didn't have anything to do that afternoon so I just doubled down. He doubled down†and I doubled down, it is madness. That was painful."

[music]

Dave:	38:06	 We have a job description guessing game. I'm going to read you a real job description pulled from the internet and you get to guess what the job title is. [sound effect] Make sure nothing ever happens.

Kenneth: 	38:18	"Oh well, that's it? Shoot. Security Guard."

Dave:	38:22	 Close. IT Security. [laughs] Yeah. Nothing. No productivity. Nothing good or bad.

Kenneth: 	38:29	He must have been at the-- I know where he works. [sound effect]

Dave: 	38:33	Any final thoughts that you like to give us?

Kenneth:	38:36	" Now we talked about integrity a few times. I think that as you submit for jobs, there are some computer parsing out your resume, plugging things into fields in a database. There's going to be more of that. But ultimately, it's going to be a people process and I'm not sure that's ever going to completely go away. I'm concerned about attempts that are going to be made to fully automate all this. I think there is going to be a lot of bias and I think there's going to be a lot of problems.†"
"But for now, it's still people. If you don't get a callback, it's probably a people problem it's not the ATS problem. If you send the same resume to every single place and you don't get a callback, it's because you didn't tune it in such a way that you're selling yourself. You need to differentiate yourself. Have integrity, differentiate yourself, if you're young especially or even if you are not, you got to put in the work to make it look and make it to actually be the professional that you're striving to be."
"Ultimately, the last point is there's this narrowing process of going through the ATS of lots of applicants down to a few applicants down to the last choices. Those last choices are made by people invariably. You want to make sure that you've got things that either differentiate to the positive and you don't have things that are going to differentiate you to the negative so social media and acting crazy on the weekends and recording it all for all to see bad things. Don't do that. Have integrity, work hard,† it's a people process."

[music]

Dave: 	40:03	"Okay. Well, that does it for this episode of RecruiterCast. A huge thank you to Ken Bedwell, a long-time friend, colleague, and coworker of mine for joining us today. Ken is a busy guy and we really do appreciate all of our guest time and Ken is no exception."
"We sure hope you'd learn a lot today. If you're looking for that job, try what we have suggested. If it works let us know, if it doesn't work let us know. This is an interactive podcast. We have a phone number that you can call for a Q&A session later on. So please get involved, help us give you the best content ever.†"
"Our goal is to give you an advantage. Listen to the information that we're providing and have a leg up on your competition and your coworkers and just feel empowered when you get to work the next day. Remember hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. We are @RecruiterCast. Check out the website, recruitercast.com. We have forms for you to contact us to make questions and request guests. You can even call us on the telephone."

Female Voice: 	41:01	904-525-8134

Dave: 	41:05	We appreciate you listening and happy recruiting. [sound effect]

41:12	"RecruiterCast is an original production produced and recorded in St. Augustine Beach, Florida and is hosted by me, Dave Webb. Our Executive Producers are Andrew Steward and Heidi Greene. Original music by Dave Webb and Andrew Steward."

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