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Two Peas in a Podcast

Episode 115 - Melissa Grabiner

With nearly three decades of experience in both HR and Recruiting, Melissa Grabiner is a sought-after strategist and expert in Talent Acquisition. Melissa spent 18 years at Takeda Pharmaceuticals where she served as a Senior HR Business Partner and then Global Director of Talent Acquisition for the company’s largest business unit.

Today Melissa is a thought leader on LinkedIn with over 377,000 followers and has appeared in Wall Street Journal, LinkedIn Careers, MarketWatch, Fast Company, and Indeed Business.


To connect with Melissa directly please reach out to:

https://topmate.io/melissagrabiner

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-grabiner/

Duration:
56m
Broadcast on:
24 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
Melissa, every single time I'm in a room with an expert in any type of field, I am just grateful that they share their time with me and our audience. So first and foremost, thank you for being here and thank you for sharing all the information that you possess. Thank you for inviting me and this is absolutely my pleasure. Now, Melissa, tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background and what is it that you do today? No, absolutely. So I live in Chicago. The suburbs of Chicago, born and raised. I actually went to school at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, also in, obviously, in Illinois. As on a personal side, I've been married 26 years. I have two sons. Both of them are in college. One of them is a senior. One of them is a sophomore. So it's, you know, empty-ness syndrome, I guess. It's been a little rough for me to be honest with you. But yeah, so I've been in working in HR and talent acquisition my entire career. I spent the majority of my career at a company called Takeda Pharmaceuticals, which is a major fortune 500 biotech pharma company. And I was the global director of talent acquisition for our largest business unit. I had a really large team of recruiters and coordinators under me. We hired about 3,000 employees a year. And when the company moved to Chicago headquarters to Boston, they offered me a full relocation and I wasn't looking to move at the time because my kids were in high school. So I ended up leaving that company, but it was a lovely 18-year run. That's where I received the bulk of my experience working in talent acquisition. I then went to another company for a year and a half. I, you know, when I left to Kate, I didn't know how long it was going to take me to find a job. I had no resume. Like, I was like, oh my God, I got to figure this out. And I ended up getting a job like immediately through someone in my network. And I was a consultant for a company for nine months. And then they actually promoted me to a global director of TA after nine months. So I went up like three levels. I don't know, I guess my boss liked me. But yeah, so I was a global director of TA for this company. This was like a truly global position. And then they moved my position to New York. They closed to Chicago. So once again, I was faced with the layoff. And then for the last three years, I've been working at a company called One Digital, where I work with different biotechs. Most of them are startup companies, predominantly in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I help them with all of their talent acquisition needs. Sometimes a client just needs mid-hire people. Other times they need to build up the entire TA infrastructure. In addition to that full-time job, I have a side business where I coach job seekers. And I help people who are looking for a new opportunity with their resumes, LinkedIn profile optimization, interview prep, job search strategies. I started this business maybe four or five months ago. It's been super fun. Most of my bookings are referrals, which is the best way to have a booking. My ratings have been super good from the people that I've worked with. And having a side business has been incredibly rewarding. And it's been able, it's been nice for me to take the knowledge and experience that I have and actually do something where I work for myself in part versus, you know, I have the corporate job, but then I have my side business. And then I have another business I started where I work with specific companies on LinkedIn in terms of brand partnerships. So if there's a company that I really believe in their mission and their vision, I work with those companies in promoting those organizations on my LinkedIn page. Speaking of LinkedIn, I'm very active on the platform. I have about 375,000 followers give or take. Most of the things I post about are job search tips, tools, motivation. I talk about mental health, HR best practices. I tend to be very authentic. I tell stories. But through LinkedIn, I met people like you and I've been able to promote my businesses on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is cliched. As it sounds, it really has changed my life. Just the many people that I've met from this platform has been incredible. And I'm incredibly grateful for this platform. Yeah, and that's a little bit about me. I love you because the best people are just always on the move. They're always doing one thing or always bouncing between ideas. And it feels like every single place where you've been, you've struck a really incredible level of success every single company you've ever worked with, you found a way to do just an incredible job. And one of the coolest things about just being in a room with you is knowing that you have hired and just been a part of so many people getting their job. And for whatever reason, it feels like today more than ever, just a lot of people are not happy in the position that they come to after graduation based on the expectation and the reality of a job being a little bit different. So there is something that happens in the college system where for whatever reason, students come into these first interviews thinking that they're going to make a hell of a lot of money right away, that they are way more qualified that they are. And it just feels like a small miscommunication. So first and foremost, you as a person who has hired quite a few people yourself, can you tell me what is it that you see for why there is this discontent between people getting their first job and what their expectations were? Yeah, you know, it's so interesting. So my father is a CPA, Certified Public Accountant, and he worked at the same company for 30 years. And back then, people didn't switch companies, you know, you stayed with a company, you were loyal. He commuted three hours a day for 30 years. And so I always joke with him, like I've been fully removed for five years and I can't imagine ever going back to an office, but like the way things were back then is so different than the way things are now. Like nowadays, people aren't going to commute three hours a day. They're not going to be slaves to their jobs. Most people don't stay at employers for 30 years. You know, I was at my company for 18 years. I'm definitely the exception. I'm not the norm. Nowadays, you see people leaving jobs every couple of years. But you know, having a senior in college, I also have a sophomore in college two sons, is I think the expectation of these college students is this big grand. You know, I'm going to get this job and I'm going to make a ton of money. I'm going to make $100,000 a year right out of college. And I'm going to be able to, you know, work from home as much as I want. And the reality is that companies aren't paying someone who's right out of college, depending on where you go, right? If you go to an Ivy League, maybe you're going to be earning a higher salary. But you know, my son is at one of the best business schools in the country. And him and I are starting to have conversations about the fact that, you know, we got to start your resume and we got to get going and we got to optimize your LinkedIn profile. And he's, you know, it's only, you know, September and he's got, you know, until May to graduate. But this is the time when people are starting to try to find jobs as a senior. But, you know, him and I have had some very frank discussions about like, you might think this is going to happen. But the reality is, is that this is going to happen. And, you know, there are so many companies that are trying to cut corners. All we hear about are layoffs after layoffs after layoffs. Companies are being very careful with their dollars and they're not paying people, I think, as much as maybe starting salaries used to be. Now, my first job out of college, I was at 21,000 a year. Now, granted, this was 25 years ago. And that would maybe equate to 30, 35,000 this year. But I thought I hit the lottery. Like, oh my God, I have a job at this amazing company. And I was making 21,000 a year. And it was enough for me to move out of my house when I was 21 years old and live on my own. But the reality is, is that the cost of living is very high. And we said to our son, like, you can live at home as long as you need to. We're never going to kick you out of the house. We want you to save your money instead of paying rent when you're 22 years old. Probably not making more than 60, 70,000 dollars a year. And again, I think for kids that aren't in the Ivy League schools, these kids aren't making nearly as much as I think they think they're going to make. And hopefully, kids are using the career resource centers at their colleges, you know, where my son, my son goes to Indiana University and he's in the business school. And they have a wonderful career center where they help the kids try to find jobs. And, you know, I see them all the time, you got to start utilizing this resource because, you know, they have connections with a lot of these major companies. And it's a great way to get your foot in the door. But, you know, my heart does ache for so many people right now. I mean, working in talent acquisition for 20 years outside of COVID, I've never seen the job market this challenging, this competitive. I hear from job seekers all over the world every day. They reach out to me on LinkedIn with their stories of, I don't understand why I had seven interviews and I've been ghosted and no one's getting back to me. And this company is asking me to create this 20 page presentation. And what's happening in the job market is something like I've never seen before. It's so bad what's going on. And that's why like with me, I decided to start these two businesses because I was never going to be one to have corporate America dictate my future, right? I had two prior layoffs within two years and as much of a good performer as I was and I, you know, my positions were relocated and I wasn't going to move. And I decided that corporate America had my future in their hands and I was no longer going to allow that to happen and have that dictate my life. And that's part of the reason why I started some side businesses myself so I can be more in control. But it's really, really tough out there and my heart aches for so many people right now. Yeah, and you gave us so much there. And one of the big things that you keep referring back to is the job market being so, so tough. Do you feel like schools are correctly setting the expectations to graduates, letting them know that, hey, when you're out in the world and when you start talking to some of these companies, a lot of them are getting a lot of applicants. Because one of the big things that was a giant surprise to me was I actually had no idea and I didn't have these conversations in time to actually be thinking about, hey, like, I need to be separating myself every step of the way. And it kind of felt like the school that I went to, I went to Illinois State, again, did really, really well, always felt like I was taking the extra steps to make sure that I was, you know, part of the school of business, of the leadership programs. But I wasn't expecting to see the future of how hard it was to find the job after I left. And it was kind of a total, like, wake up shock to me. Why do you think that happens? You know, I think colleges have an opportunity to absolutely do a better job preparing their seniors and sometimes even their juniors and even people that are looking for internships. Like, my son had an internship for the last two summers at my at my company, but his school didn't provide any sort of services. He had to go on handshake, which is a very popular website for kids that are in college. He basically had to find the internships on his own. And with my help, I was able to get him an interview at my company. But it is just incredibly difficult right now. Even when I talk about with my son, like the classes that he's taking, there's really not a lot of classes that prepare them for a job search. You know, certainly he's in the business school, so he's taking business type classes. But, you know, I happen to be able to help him with his resume because this is what I do for a living. This is, you know, where all my experience is. A lot of the people that I coach within my business are people that are right out of college or a couple of years out of college that don't really understand how to write a resume. They don't know how to go about a job search. And from my experience, what I hear from a lot of the people that I coach and a lot of my clients is that their colleges aren't necessarily preparing them for the next step. It's almost like people graduate from college and then the college like kind of washes their hands clean of these graduates. But I think part of what, you know, we as parents or whoever's paying for your kid's college, like they should really be working with these students and trying to help them get a job, especially because a lot of colleges have these statistics like X amount of our graduates find a job within three months of graduation. Just from my experience, I don't see colleges do a really, really great job at this. I think some do better than others. But I know when I graduated college, and again, this was many years ago, there was no such thing as any help. And I went to University of Illinois. There was no such thing as help from my university that I went to. They didn't have anything of this nature. But I really feel, you know, my heart aches for really job seekers, whether they're, you know, been in the corporate America for 30 years or someone who's 18, 19 years old, trying to get their foot in the door at an organization. You know, the job market is just incredibly, incredibly competitive right now. And I really hope and pray and cross my fingers that things turn around. Yeah. And let me ask you this question, because this is one of the things that I've been wondering about sitting on the other side of this and going, Hey, like one of the big things that I think I've seen since the start of COVID is that there are so many people applying for the same positions from all over the country, knowing that the remote workforce kind of changed how we view a job, right? You're no longer looking at just the opportunities that are around in the area where you live or the nearest city. You're kind of looking at opportunities all over the country. Have you seen that to be true? And does that feel like a good thing? So I have very strong feelings about remote work. So I've been a fully remote employee for five years. And then prior to that, I worked remote three days a week before remote was really even a thing. And there are many, many people that reach out to me on LinkedIn that are asking me for my tips and tools to find a remote position. But then you have companies like Amazon who the other day announced that all of their employees, there was a mandate that all of their employees had to come back to the office five days a week. So there's like this whole discussion going on about, you know, apparently from everything I've read, you know, so many of these people are already trying to find a new job, you know, flexibility matters. And I feel that the companies that allow flexibility with their workforce are going to be able to not only hire the best talent, but retain the best talent. You know, I'm a big fan of remote work. I think that it allows someone to have a much better work life balance. And you know, I don't spend money on gas. And I spend more time exercising because I'm not spending that time commuting. And I have more time with my husband. And when my kids were at home, I had just so much better work life balance. I think the war for talent when the job market does turn around, which I do believe is going to be sooner versus later, companies have to at least offer remote work in part. Any company that is mandating a five day a week in the office, they're simply not going to be able to hire the best talent. And one thing I think a lot of companies don't realize to or think about, and I post about this on LinkedIn, is that companies that allow remote workers have the pick of the best talent nationally, or even globally, right? Companies that do not allow remote workers only have the pick of the best talent locally. And that's a huge distinction. So when I was at Takeda, I had a team of recruiters and coordinators. We worked from home three days a week. Again, this was pre COVID. This was way before, you know, working from home was even a thing. And, you know, I had no issue with with them working from home three days a week. And there were some weeks that I sent an email and was like, okay, guys, we're going to be home every day of this week. And I have no problem with that. My team was incredibly high functioning. We've won numerous, numerous awards, global awards for our output. So I don't think that remote work is an issue at all. If people, you know, are, are, you know, taken their job seriously and are still committed, I feel like my team did so much of a better output because they were so appreciative of the fact that they had the flexibility. But again, the war for talent will pick up. There's no question about it. And one thing I can tell you for certain being in recruiting for many, many years, every year the pendulum, I say like the pendulum changes. So right now we're in an employer-driven market. We will once again be in a candidate-driven market. And so what's going to happen is candidates are going to be calling the shots. And the good candidates with the good backgrounds and the good experience, they're the ones that are going to be saying, this is what I demand for my employer. And if my employer does not adhere, then I'm not going to work there. Yeah. And I love your side of the story because it sounds like you were on the perfect team who was doing really, really good work and appreciated the working from home opportunities. Yes. Now on the employer side, for companies that struggle with maintaining specifically really good performance with teams with working at home, where is this middle ground between finding the delicate balance between giving people the flexibility, but at the same time, making sure that good teamwork and getting assistance where you need to get assistance is still happening at the same time as giving people their flexibility. Yeah. I mean, my team knew it was kind of like an unwritten law on my team, where just because you're working from home doesn't mean you're actually not working. I had one employee specifically who we had these chat features so you can tell who's online at any given time. And I had one of my employees who was like going for hours at a time. And so I approached her about it and I said, look, I have no issue with you working from home, but you need to be working and you can't be going to the gym for two hours in the middle of the day. If you need to do that, just let me know so that I have the expectation of where you are. But I said, if you can't perform at the level of the rest of the team and really be committed, then I'm going to almost have no choice but to kind of pull back the reins on your working remotely situation. And I mean, I had a team of, you know, I had a very, very loyal team of recruiters and I gave them a lot of work-life balance because I always want to work-life balance for my bosses. But again, you know, they knew that just because they were being remote did not give them a way to work five hours a day instead of maybe eight hours a day. I trusted everybody until they gave me a reason not to trust them. And with this one employee, she gave me a reason not to trust her. And that's when I had to have that hard conversation with her. And I was just very point blank and I said, I don't want to take remote away from you, but you need to be working as if you were working in the office. And she was like, I'm so sorry, you're right. And then things were fine. You know, I had that conversation, but I think for teams that work remote, there has to be that expectations that are sent by the manager of what are the expectations if people are working from home. And what do you expect from your team? And it's having those conversations and then having the difficult conversations when you see someone that is perhaps slacking or taking advantage of being able to work remotely. I believe it's up to the manager to stay on top. And I'm not saying micromanage, like I'm very much against micromanaging because we're all adults here and no one ever says, oh, I love being micromanage, but you know, you have to have that trust with your team that they're actually going to deliver results. Because my philosophy was, I don't care necessarily where you work as long as you're filling your jobs and you're hiring managers and your candidates are happy. And I had ways of tracking that reporting, you know, we did like hiring manager surveys, things like that. But I only had that one employee who was who was an issue. And again, once we had that conversation, things were fine. Yeah. And sometimes it literally is as simple as just having the right conversation. And I gave her the benefit of the doubt, you know, I never want to not give people the benefit of the doubt. And I did that. But I said, you got to be honest with me like what's going on. And then what was happening is like the other people on my team were noticing that she was missing an action for three, four hours a day. And I think they were getting upset. Like, why, why does she get to leave from 10 to two? And I kind of sensed the frustration. And so then I was like, okay, I need to nip this in the button out before it gets worse. And I felt like we're two adults. We're having a very honest conversation. And if she said to me that, you know, I'm having a really challenging time being motivated working from home, then I probably would have said, well, maybe you should start working out of the office because at the end of the day, we're paying you to do a job and you have to get your job done well. Yeah. And I appreciate that because this also speaks to how good of a manager you are having this tough conversation at the right time in the right way. Yeah. Let's switch gears just a little bit. And one of the biggest things that I see a lot of the time is people who literally have no idea how to write a resume. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people make on the resume that just kind of automatically disqualify them from being eligible for their dream job in the position that they're looking to? Yeah, I know that's a great question. So definitely do not put a picture on your resume. This can open up the door devices. You'd be surprised like how many people I coach that send me a copy of their resume for me to review. And I'm like, oh my God, they have like this big picture of them. One thing I see with resumes that's a big miss are people that list like what they did at their jobs, but not what were the outcomes of that. So, you know, a lot of people, what they do is they take perhaps their job description and they plug it into their resume and say, these were my duties and responsibilities. But I want to know what was the impact of your responsibilities? Did you save X amount of dollars? Did you increase efficiency by X amount? You know, using quantifiable figures, percentages, numbers, that's what makes a resume really, really stand out. I also see people put their full address on a resume, which is a no-no. I think for a safety issue, you should never put your full address because you never know where your resume is going to go. I always say at the very top of your resume, you want to put four things. You want to put your email address, your city and state, your LinkedIn URL, and your phone number in one line. And above that line, put your name. I see a lot of resumes that have way too many bullet points. So, someone could say, okay, I've been in this job for two years, and then I see 25 bullet points. And typically, recruiters are not going to spend time going through a resume point by point by point. Most recruiters, depending on the volume they have on their plates, are going to spend between 20 and 30 seconds reviewing a resume. So, you want to make it look appealing. Again, no pictures. You want to have, I think, listing your jobs chronological. So, someone like my son, who is right out of college and, you know, soon to be out of college, but doesn't have a lot of work experience, his resume, I put his education at the top, and then under that, I put his work experience. For people that have been in the corporate world or in the working world, I always say, put your education at the bottom, and then list your experiences by the most recent position, and then so on, and so on, and so on. I see a lot of people write resumes where they list the companies they've worked at, but don't indicate what the company does. You know, if you're not a Microsoft or an Amazon or an Apple, you know, sometimes I come across these resumes of people working at companies, and I don't know what industry the company is in, I don't know where they're located or headquartered. I don't know what their like revenue is. So, I always say, put a little description under the name of your company, one or two sentences. So, the recruiter or the hiring manager is educated on what industry is this person coming from. I'm also not a fan of resumes that are over three pages. I feel that no matter how long you've been working, you can get your resume. Ideally, two pages. My son, my son Ryan, who's in college, his resume is one page. He doesn't have a lot of work experience. That's perfectly fine. My resume is three pages because I have 25 years of experience, and there's just no way I could get it less than that. I tried and I just couldn't. But when I see resumes that are over three pages, I say, okay, we got to make this shorter. And a lot of it is just the look in the feel. You want to make it look inviting for a recruiter to read it. If it's overwhelming, if there's charts and boxes and columns, you want to have it. I don't like when a resume has two separate columns. I think it's very hard to read. You just want to have it flow really nicely. I think those are the main things that people need to think about when they're writing the resume. Yeah, I like all of those because they're simple, straightforward, and really easy to follow. What's interesting is historically, I've always heard the one page resume rule. Does that still apply, or is that a thing of the past where today, especially in the digital world, people are just much more likely to even read a two page resume? Yeah, I mean, I don't see how someone like myself with 25 years of experience could ever get all of my accomplishments and my awards and everything. I don't see how, sorry, I don't see how I could ever get all of my experience on a one page resume. There is nothing wrong with, so my resume's three pages. I try to get it to two pages. I had a really hard time doing that. Again, one page depends how many years of experience you have. If you've been working, let's say, zero to three years of experience, I'd say, yeah, you could probably get your resume on one page, or even up to five years of experience. But you don't want to omit important things from your resume because you're afraid of the length of your resume. So again, never more than three pages. I see a lot of people that I coach that send me their resumes that are over four pages, and the first thing I say to them is, we need to get this down because no recruiter, the longer the resume is, the more prone people are going to be kind of shying away from it and not wanting to read it. You want to give someone a reason to read your resume, but I don't think this one page rule makes any sense, again, because someone like myself, I can't get it on one page. Yeah, makes sense. Now, I don't know the politically correct way to ask this. So let me just go from a genuine perspective. How do you fluff up your resume enough to make sure that you describe exactly what you did well enough at the same time without, you know, stretching the realities of truth and without losing any appeal on the resume? Yeah, so what I would say to my clients is that you never really want to necessarily embellish on a resume because what if you're in an interview and you're asked a question about your resume, but you embellished something and you really didn't do what you said you did? I never want one of my clients to be in that situation. What I do suggest to people when they're writing the resume is, and although this is time consuming, is try to mold your resume to the job you're applying for because you want to give the recruiter at the company a reason to feel that you're a match for that job. And it might take a little bit of time, but it definitely can pay off. So what I suggest to people is if you see a job that you're interested in, take a copy of the resume and at least some of the top bullet points, because typically on a job description, the most prevalent or imperative responsibilities are kind of higher up and the ones that maybe don't have as much impact are going to be lower down. If you want to take those bullet points and incorporate them somehow into your resume to show that you have the experience that the job is asking you for, but never to necessarily lie, because again, I never want someone to be caught off guard in an interview or called in for an interview because the recruiter feels like they have this really good applicable experience, but then they're asked about it and then the candidate can't speak to it or even worse, they get hired. And then, you know, they're given these job duties and responsibilities because they were told during the interview and it's on their resume that they have experience in XYZ. That's the worst case scenario. But you know, I think there's a lot of really good adjectives people can use. You know, they've developed, you know, managed, implemented, spearheaded, it's, it's using really catchy verbs. And again, I can't express enough the importance of quantifiable information. When I coach my clients, every single one of my clients, I say to them, we have to have at least a couple of bullet points for each of your jobs about quantifiable metrics, because at the end of the day, this is what managers and recruiters are looking for. Anyone can say they did XYZ, but what was the impact? You know, what was the outcome of that? How did you save your company money? How did you slave time off a process? This is what recruiters are looking for and what managers are looking for. I love that. I love that because it's just good advice. And at the end of the day, like you shouldn't be abolishing the job that you did. And you should have data driven approach to just about everything that you do. Now, one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen my friends and especially younger friends that I have made is when they see a listing with a specific like, Hey, we're looking for someone with five years of experience, to me, it feels like a lot of people get kind of taken aback and go, Hey, I don't necessarily fill this box. So it's not even worth applying for a job. What do you think stops people who are really good candidates, but don't necessarily have this specific job experience from applying for a job that they could potentially land given, you know, the combination of their prior experiences and everything else that they do. Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that question. I actually posted about this recently on LinkedIn is that I always say to people don't be your own worst enemy. When I hire people very rarely, do I ever hire someone who's a 100% match to the job description? And the reason why is because people need to grow and develop into their positions. If someone is about a 70% match, apply, you know, you never know the recruiter or hard manager might see something in your background that is really enticing to them. Don't self reject before you try, especially in today's job market where, you know, it's not uncommon to see go on LinkedIn and to see a job posting with 2000 applicants. Now, personally, if I saw a position that had 2000 resumes, I personally wouldn't apply because I'm like, there's no way I'm going to, it's a numbers game at that point. But if there's a lower number of people and you're that have applied and you don't have a perfect match, that's okay. I have never been a perfect match for any of the jobs that I've had. There have been parts of the jobs where I didn't have that experience, but I knew I could learn, right? Like I always say, like if you have the character, if you have the drive, if you are a cultural fit, if the manager is willing to train you, then go ahead and apply. You know, you don't want to, you don't want to be your own worst enemy and reject yourself before you even know. That's, I think, a big misconception that people have is, oh my God, I'm only a 90% match. I'm not a 100% match. I think most recruiters would agree with me is like, we don't necessarily want to hire people that are a perfect match because are they going to get bored in two months? Are they going to say, oh, I've done everything that this job entails and am I ever going to learn and grow and develop and enhance my skill set? Probably not if you have a perfect match to what the job is asking you to do. Yeah, I love the way that you go about this because the one big thing that I always say and use as a guide post for just any type of application or talking to anyone about it is I go, hey, every single recruiter and every single job post their ideal bucket list of like, it's almost like a dating game. If here is what I would like. At the end of the day, if you fill most of these categories and you are a high achiever and you learn well and you're trainable and you have a bucket of other experiences, odds are you're going to get a second look and it's always the worst going for the job. Even if you don't get it at the end of the day, it's almost like getting the interview and just getting in the door is beneficial because next time around, you know exactly what they're looking for. Yeah, and one thing I want to mention too, for job seekers, this is really important is that I think it's not enough anymore in today's day and age to apply to a job, sit back and hope that you're contacted by someone at the company. What job seekers need to do to differentiate themselves is actually reach out to someone at the company. So reach if you apply to a job, find out who are recruiters. You can do that by doing a LinkedIn search. Find out who if you think you know who perhaps the hiring manager is or who the hiring manager's title is. Reach out to them on LinkedIn. I found my job, my current job, by sending a message to the CEO of my company. My company had no job postings. I had no idea if they were hiring, but I knew it was a company that I was always interested in. I always had them in the back of my mind and I reached out to the CEO and I said one of two things is going to happen. She's either going to get back to me or she's not and if she doesn't get back to me, then at least I know I tried. And if she does get back to me, perhaps this is going to lead to something. Two weeks later, long story short, I had a job offer in my hand. And so I think with LinkedIn and you could basically find anyone on the platform, you know, you simply go to the company page, you click on the word people and in the search bar, you type in talent acquisition or you type in recruiter and you look for someone who's high up in talent acquisition. So maybe like a VP, a director, reach out to these people, let them know you applied, let them know what the position you applied for is with a couple bullet points about your background, attach a copy of your resume. Maybe you'll hear back and maybe you won't, but there are so many job seekers that I have coached that I've told them to do this that actually found a job because they took this extra stuff. You know, in today's job market, which is so incredibly, incredibly competitive, job seekers have to do things to make them stand out from the rest. And to me, like when people reach out to me on LinkedIn, I love it because to me, it shows me that they're proactive. It shows me they're professional and they're taking the time to put themselves ahead of other people. I read every message when people reach out to me on LinkedIn, because I appreciate that people take the time to do it. But again, you know, in today's crazy job market, it's not enough to apply to a job, sit back, cross your fingers, hope and pray you hear back. It's simply not going to happen. You've got to take that extra step, take your job search in your own hands, be aggressive about it. The extra 10 minutes to take you to write a message on LinkedIn could be the difference between getting a job or not. And I'm proof that this method can work. Yeah. And I love that message so much because for whatever reason, it feels like today, more than ever, people, especially younger people are so scared and so soft of getting a no. Like, if you reach out to 100 people, one or two of them will at least get back to you. Have you found that to be a thing where I feel like the older generation is just much more kind of in tune with who they are as people and much more accepted of the fact that sometimes people will just say no to you where a lot of the younger generation will generally not take action based on their fear of getting a no. No, I absolutely agree with that. And what I tell my son, Ryan, is you got to be aggressive. You know, I'm going to help you as much as I can during your job search. But like, most of the work is going to come from you and you have to be aggressive. You know, what I always say is, and again, I post about this on LinkedIn is that like you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take. And when you're in a crisis, you know, a lot of these people are in crisis situations. I mean, not just to be true, you know, transparent is, you know, people lose their jobs. A lot of times they have no income. They have no insurance. I heard from a man yesterday who reached out to man LinkedIn. He's been unemployed for two years. He literally is about to go homeless. My heart aches for him. And so I said, okay, what have you done to find a job? Like, let's jump on a call. Like, he wasn't a client of mine, but I felt so bad. We jumped on a quick call and I said, tell me what have you been doing? And he really wasn't doing any of the right things, you know, every every couple hours he would refresh his LinkedIn browser hoping that new jobs would appear. He would go on indeed. I said, the job market isn't just LinkedIn. It's not just indeed like, go to your university's career center. Maybe they have an alumni network, go to go to networking events of events, you know, for your industry. I'll tell you, when I left my job after 18 years, there is an organization in Chicago called Her Mac. It's the HR Management Association of Chicago. And I was a panel speaker on an event. This was a couple weeks after I left my company. And I basically literally reached out to someone at Her Mac and I said, I know you have this event coming up. I don't know if you have your guest speakers, but I would love to raise my hand to me and guest speaker. And they're like, yes, love it. Let's do it. And I was a guest speaker at this event. And I met a ton of people. And I still talk to some of these people. And I'm connected with all of them on LinkedIn. So it's like, you have to be aggressive. And, and again, rejection is part of every job search, just secret story, right? I've been rejected many times before. I'm not saying like I'm perfect. There were many companies that I reached out to that never got back to me. But rejection is part of a journey when your job seeking, right? It to me is the cliches, it sounds, I almost feel like rejection is redirection. And every time you're rejected, it simply means, in my opinion, that it wasn't meant for you, because there's something better out there for you. Rejection happens to all of us. I don't care how great of a college you went to, I don't care your educational background. I don't care, you know, if you have 10 years of Microsoft, it doesn't matter. Rejection is part of everyone's story. It's part of looking for a job. But all you need is that one yes. And this is what I tell job seekers all the time, is that all the rejections that you're getting is leading you to that one yes. So you got to keep going every day is a new day, every day is a new possibility. You know, on LinkedIn, there's 530 million people in the United States. There's an abundance of, that's an insane number. It's crazy. There's over 1 billion people on the platform worldwide. And so what I say to my clients is, every day you need to reach out to at least 20 people. You, you, you, and don't be shy. Because again, you might not hear back from everyone. You're almost going to expect not to hear back from everyone, but at least, you know, you try. Right. And I found my job because I sent a note to the CEO of my company. There's no question I wouldn't be working there because there was no job posting. I didn't even know if they were hiring. And I know for sure if I didn't do that, I wouldn't be at this company already for three years. So you have to be aggressive in your job search. You have to be okay with getting rejected. It's part of everyone's journey. Yeah, it's funny because I talk about getting a job or using your network to try and find new opportunities the same way I talk about like dating. You're never ever going to get a yes. If you don't ask the question, you're never ever going to know who it is that you're missing in your life until you actually go out there and look at the people who are out there doing the thing that you want to be doing without question. And we always have to be our own best advocate too, right? So, you know, it's like, what if you got to lose? Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to pat yourself on the back. And, you know, when you're reaching out, like when I reached out to the CEO, I had a couple bullet points in terms of some of my really good accomplishments. And I was like, this is the time I need to pat myself on the back because I need to give her a reason to want to talk to me. So I had to make my message very, very enticing and very strong for her to have a reason to talk to me made the made all the difference in the world. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about this confidence, the kind of the balancing act between being confident enough and knowing that on the other side of this is success. And at the same time, when getting a couple of nodes, making sure that you don't lose, I talk about it as the process, like stick to the process that you know works, even though the outcome doesn't always result into exactly what you want immediately. How do you, especially with some of the clients who have been, you know, out of the job market for a little bit, make sure that they are still out there taking the shots without losing the confidence at the same time, not getting their hopes up for every available opportunity. Yeah. So I really believe, and I say this on LinkedIn all the time, like, my job is what I do. My job is not who I am. I'm a mother, I'm a wife, I'm a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm a friend, like in my life, that is my most important things. The secondary is who I am professionally. So what, and I really believe this to be true, like my no job will ever be as important to me as my family, like that's never going to happen. So it's, it's being your own best advocate and realizing that a recruiter that rejects you, they don't know you, they're just looking at a piece of paper. They don't know you as a person, they don't know what you're about, they don't know your story. They're just looking at your professional experience based on a piece of paper. So, so what I say is never let someone who you don't know who spends 10 to 20 seconds looking at your background ever have any sort of power over you in terms of your self control, because their job as recruiters is only to find the best people, right? And so if 100 people apply, maybe 10% of those people will be viewed or fit. The other 90% doesn't mean they're bad people, it doesn't, maybe they're just not a particular fit for that job, but it doesn't make them any less of a professional or any less of a person at all. So to me, it's, and the other thing I would say too, is that when you're going through a job search, confidence is really, really important. Like I'm not a big fan of arrogant people. I, you know, met my fair share of arrogance. I don't hire arrogant people at all, but I think there's that fine line of being confident and being arrogant. And I don't think anyone wants to hire people that are arrogant because those from my experience, those are people that are very difficult to work with. You want to hire people that are confident and you know are going to get the job done. I love that. I love that because it just speaks to the truth on both sides of the hiring conversation. Now, the one big thing that I always wondered about is the gender differences, because to me, it has always felt that on the one side, females and women in general are much better at a thing, but sometimes worse at having the confidence to say that they're good at it. And on the other's hand, you have men who are so, so confident that they're able to do the work, even without having any ability to actually accomplish it. Have you found that to be true? And have you found any differences between the sexes and how they go about the job search and the things that make them successful? Yeah, you know, generally speaking, if I take a look or think through like, okay, because I would say the, I've coached over 100 people and I would say, it's probably a pretty even split between males and females. I think generally speaking, I was, the females didn't pat themselves on the back as much as the males. So in other words, their resumes weren't as full of accomplishments as the male resumes were. And so, what I always tell job seekers, whatever male or females, that you always have to be your own best advocate and your resume is a place for you to shine. But definitely, I saw it more with the females, that they were a little more standoffish and meaker in terms of really highlighting your value and that the value was that you brought to your prior companies. And, you know, don't be afraid to showcase it because this is what a resume is, your resume is you want to get people to have a reason to call you, but you have to have it within your resume to give them that reason. So I spent more time, I think critiquing resumes of the women versus the men. The men seem to have much more, like the quantifiable figures. It was the women that didn't have as much depth into their backgrounds that I was like, you really need to enhance your resume and here's how we're going to do it. Yeah, I love that. Now, let me ask this difficult question. Is there such a thing as a perfect job for somebody? Because I've always had this weird feeling that the perfect job for you is the one where you get along with the team while you find meaning in your work. And a lot of the time, it doesn't necessarily matter what it is that you actually do, but rather who it is that you do that job with. I think it depends on what is important to the individual. You know, to some people, the perfect job is about making as much money as they can. To some people, the perfect job is about work life balance. To some people, the perfect job is I work for eight hours a day, I go home, and I don't turn on my computer until the next day. Some people, the perfect job is about working with really good people or having a good boss. So I think it really depends on what's important to the individual in terms of if it's a perfect job for them. Generally speaking, I think for any job, there are things that US 100 people, 90, if not more, are going to say, yeah, there's things about my job. I wish I could change. You know, I've always been very blessed where I've, for the most part, have really loved my jobs. None of them are perfect. I mean, there were things I wished I changed. And also, depending on like the time of year, right, it depended on what was happening within the business I was supporting. Like if we were going through a hiring freeze, yeah, my job wasn't great because we weren't hiring. And then I was scared that I would have to lay off my recruiters, but then we had like upsurges and optics of hiring. My job wasn't good because we had too much on our plate. So I think it really just depends on what's important to the individual in terms of if someone has a perfect job. Yeah, I love the way that you talk about your job experience because it's so, so positive. And let me ask you this, do you think that is luck or just the ability to identify the right opportunities to say yes to that you've had for a really long time? You know, I'm going to, I guess, speak about the company I was at for 18 years. I was always very blessed to have really supportive supervisors and bosses. That's that's number one. I was able to build up an entire talent acquisition function for the business I supported from scratch. And I was given in here's eczema, you know, whatever money you need to bring in people, processes, budgets, systems, technology. I was always given a lot of leeway in my jobs to do what I saw fit to to make my department run efficiently. I didn't, I can't say that I was happy all the time and we had some very difficult moments, of course, but I've just been very blessed. I've always had really good managers and really good people. And, you know, also I built out my team. And so I was able to hire anyone who I wanted on my team. I had a team, a core team of 11 people. I hired every one of those people. So I was very, very thoughtful in terms of what those decisions were, because I am a big believer in that you're only as good as the team you work with. And so for my team to be highly functioning, I had to hire people who I knew would work well together. Diversity was very important to me. So I had 50/50 split between men and women. I had a huge range of age. I've had, you know, I hired like entry level people all the way up to people that, you know, were in their mid 50s and everything between. I hired people from different ethnic backgrounds. So my team was truly like a melting pot of diversity. And I knew that's what I wanted when I ultimately had my team in place. But being able to build a team, however I saw fit, made a huge difference in how I was happy with my job, because it was up to me to do whatever I needed to do to build this department. So I think coupled with the fact that I had a team that I built with management that was incredibly supportive of me, allowed me to really, really love my job. And again, I had a lot of flexibility. But, you know, I mean, working at a company 18 years, you know, my company went through three different organizational changes. You know, we were purchased, we spun off. And every single time this happened, there was a chance I was going to lose my job. And somehow I was safe every time. But there were definitely times where I was like, I'm going to be out of a job or I had, you know, 12 hour days because we were putting in a new applicant tracking system. It was never always perfect. There were many hardships I went through. But looking back, I'm grateful for those times because it made me learn a lot and it made me to be the professional I am today. Yeah. And it gives me so much. And I have so much appreciation for the incredible amount of work that it took to build a great team. Because I know just how hard it is to find people who you want to be working with who are a good fit for doing the exact job you're hiring them for. Yeah. What were some of the biggest characteristics that were on your list of like, I want people who are this to make sure that they're good team members? Yes. So they had to be a nice person, first and foremost, I don't believe in hiring jerks. I'm a very good judge of character for having, you know, interviewed hundreds of people throughout the years. So they had to be someone who would be easy to work with. They had to be someone who had good character, good integrity, who was trainable and teachable, you know, recruiting is not rocket science. I think you can teach anyone to be a recruiter. I can't teach people to be kind. I can't teach people to have integrity. I can't teach people to have strong character. So it was like those, those characteristics is what I hired for. And I wanted to make sure that the team would mesh with these people as well. So when I interviewed someone new, I had that person interview with the rest of my team because their feedback was just as important to me as my own thought. So what, what, you know, in the larger my team got, you know, it wouldn't be uncommon. Let's say I had eight people on my team at one point and we were hiring an HR coordinator. I had every single person, not eight individual interviews, but I had everyone at least meet all the candidates because I wanted the buy-in of my team. I trusted my team. We were a well-oiled machine. And if someone had a concern, I listened to that. You know, ultimately it was my ultimate decision of who I hired and who I didn't. But I always made sure to involve my team in the interviews because I wanted them to feel that they had a say in who their team members were going to be. And I was lucky in the sense that my boss never wanted to interview these people. You know, his philosophy was I trust you completely. If you like these people, hire them. I don't need to meet them. I don't need to vet them. So in that regard, I was given the leeway to really bring on whoever I felt I needed to. But again, you have to be a nice person. You have to have integrity. You have to be teachable, coachable, trainable. And you have to have good character. I can teach anyone how to recruit or read a resume or create an offer letter. I don't want to work with jerks. And that was my number one rule. Yeah. And the big piece that is the underlying in all of that is just trust. I love that your boss had the trust in you and you had the trust in your team to make sure that not it, not only is it a job that gets filled, but you understand that at the end of the day, this is a person who needs to work with a lot of different people to fulfill a lot of responsibilities as well. So this is a team decision and we're in this together. Yes. Yeah, I just want to say one thing. I think part of the reason why. So in my career, the one thing I'm the most proud of is that in all the years of managing, I never lost a direct report due to a resignation. I don't know. That's that. Yeah, never. And there was at one point I was managing up to 22 people at one time. And so I think part of the reason why I had such a loyal team was because I really cared about them as people. I gave them great work, life balance. They felt like they were truly a part of the team. You know, my thought was, if you look on an org chart, I'm here. And maybe my team's under me. But to me, we were all equals. We were all equals. And I would almost argue and say they were more important than me because they kept the ship. I always say we were a ship in a wild oil machine. They kept it running day in and day out. So if my team wasn't successful, I wouldn't be successful. And I truly believe that we were all equals. Yeah, I love that. And I think that recognition is the exact reason why everyone was so excited to work under you and why you guys were an incredible team. Yeah, let me take you in one more direction before we let you go for the day. And it's this one. One of the other big things that I see a lot of people miss out on opportunities on today is because of the impact of social media. And it's not necessarily something that we had to think about, you know, 10 or 15 years ago. But today it's more important than ever to have things like Facebook, Instagram, and everything else cleaned up prior to applying to your dream job to make sure that, you know, they correctly reflect who it is that you are as a person, as well as the messaging that you want to build for yourself as a brand. What are some of the big no knows and things that you've seen from your clients where you just go, Hey, this just shows the employer that you're not the picture of the person you're trying to show on your resume. I think the biggest mistake I see people make is having a very inappropriate email address. So here's an example. So I'm just going to throw this out there. So if someone has if someone has an email address of icrac.com, like I've seen some pretty crazy email addresses. That's a big no no. You know, it doesn't show your professional when you have a very, very inappropriate and immature email address. And I think a lot of people don't think about that. And, you know, when I looking, you know, I've hired hundreds of people throughout my career, I've come across definitely my share of very, very inappropriate email addresses. But, you know, I am not one to like dig on people. So like, if I'm not one to hire someone or thinking about hiring someone and then being like, okay, what does your Instagram look like? What does your Facebook look like? Maybe I should. I just I just don't. But I think people that have a public profile on any of these social media sites make sure that it's professional, make sure that the videos that you are posting or what you are posting is appropriate because you never know who's going to end up reviewing it and reading it. Like my like outside of LinkedIn, like my Facebook page is private only to my followers. But, you know, there are a lot of people that don't have that setting set up. And so anyone can go and review their page. Just make sure that, you know, keep in mind that when you're looking for a job, you want to make sure that anywhere you that you where you are on social media, that you wouldn't be embarrassed or ashamed and you would be okay with anyone seeing what you have out there. Yeah. Now, do you think social media is helping people get more jobs or do you think it is causing more people to miss out on really good opportunities that are out there based on some of these missteps and just doing stupid things on the internet? I think it's hurting more people than helping. I mean, once in a while, you hear these stories of, oh, I created a video like a video walking through my resume and I caught the attention of all these employers. You heard those stories very, very seldom. You hear more stories about people either getting terminated because of something they posted on social media or people that have a very, very unprofessional account in one of their Instagram or Snapchat or whatever, where there are employers that would see that and it would deter them from hiring you. So I always say, you have to be very careful with what you put out there, especially when you're looking for a job. Love that. Now, for anyone in our network who's looking to work with you, who's looking to partner with you on some opportunities, how do they get a hold of you and what is easier way to get in contact with you to make sure that you're able to help people find their dream job? Yeah, no, I really appreciate you asking. So I am definitely on LinkedIn. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I also have a website where I'm on a platform called TopMate and so someone can type in topmate.io/MelissaGravner1Word and that will take them directly to my page of my services and how I'm able to help job seekers. Melissa, I am just so, so grateful that people like you are out there in the world sharing some of this really, really important information to make sure that people are able to find their dream jobs. People are able to know how to stay out of trouble when they're looking for work. Thank you so much for sharing some of these tips and sharing your valuable time with me and our audience. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. And we'll see you guys next time. Thank you for listening. You