Welcome to 30 days to hired. My name is Julian Placido, and I'm very excited about the guests I have on the show today. Her name is Judy, Molly Rajkumar. And judy is a career consultant at the University of Texas at Dallas, and also has a private coaching business called Judy fearless. So, Judy, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm Wonderful. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, no, thank you for your time. Well, Judy, you have an amazing background. And I wanted to bring you on the show to unpack two main ideas. Number one, you are an expert dealing particularly with the millennial workforce.

And everyone knows that's a really big population entering the workforce and the bulk of the existing one right now. And number two, you also have a deep recruiting background as well. This is 30 days to hired. We try to help people find their dream job in 30 days or less. And I wanted to unpack just some general best practices when it comes to the job search. Cool.

That sounds great. Fantastic. All right. Well, cool. Well, Judy, I want people to know a little bit more about you. So tell us more about what you do at UTD and your day to day.

Okay, perfect. So currently I am a career consultant at the School of Management. I serve over 8000 students in identifying internships and jobs. So it's a really fun role for me. I get to be a career advocate and coach to help them narrow down their career search, update their resumes work on their LinkedIn to effectively network and one of the most, one of the funniest things or most fun things that I work on is how to help them effectively promote themselves in the interviewing process. So the communication aspect is really critical.

And so we do this through one on one coaching, group sessions, classroom visits as well as workshop facilitation. And when I was deciding to make the transition from the financial and IT consulting industries or corporate really and moving into higher education, I really had to think who were the most, when did I have the most fun? Yeah, and who were the clients that are really enjoyed serving, and they were always the entry level. Folks, people who were our interns, our campus hires there, so don't we, it was so full of ideas. And it was just a matter of how to get them to effectively communicate those ideas in a way that people would buy into them. And so that's why I decided to pursue higher education.

At the same time, I do have a career coaching business, where I do help people who are in transition. So be leveraging all of my recruitment and human resources experience to help people make a job change from one industry to another. And so that's my day to day. So Judy fairless. That's a very interesting branding piece. Tell us more about the fearless nature of your coaching business today.

Okay, so when I was starting my coaching business, I had to think of a name that made me feel really good about myself and good about what I was doing and really trying to identify what's the message that I want to communicate to the world. I was in a wonderful place where I've learned to just give back and so when I thought about It fearless made me realize I just want to fear a little less every day. And when we specifically talk about the career search or making transitions, a lot of us have these big dreams and goals. And remember when you were little, you wanted to be president or an astronaut or a movie star. And, you know, as you got older, you started to get more and more cynical, like those things are not really feasible. Um, and so that kind of stuck with us.

And when I think about the career search, we I think about all the obstacles that come in play and the excuses that we continue to say to ourselves that prevent us from achieving those dreams. And so what I do is I help people overcome those fear factors by coming up with a process to identify what exactly is the problem and this is point A, this is point being you want to get to point B, let's work together to get there. No, I did that, especially having my own Odyssey of not being able to find a job as soon as I graduated from college. It was a very fearful experience. I mean, I was rejected literally 35 times I didn't know what to do with myself, I felt like the market didn't want me and looking for a job is absolutely one of the most emotional things you could ever do you spend more time there a lot of times with your family.

So I love that element of overcoming your fears when it comes to the job search, because it really is this kind of a natural thing that I that now at least what your role in the educational system is now preparing you for that. I think that's fantastic. So So let's jump into some of the characteristics of the millennial help us understand kind of some of the defining characteristics of this millennial generation. So the millennial generation, there's just so much research around it. And as far as the ages, what we're talking about when we say Millennials are people who have come to come to age in the 1990s and 2000s. So you kind of think about what's happening around then.

Is there an actual year date cutoff, I've seen different things, so many different things that they say like 1981 1982, to about like, early 2000s. And now you're getting into Generation Z. So it's really interesting. But what we do know for sure is that the millennials are the largest workforce at this point. Okay? They've surpassed the baby boomers.

And that's one big reason why there's so much research out there and generational studies on how to effectively influence and motivate millennials. Yep. And so when we talk about the characteristics, three big things come to mind. So really big about personal development. They want to make an impact. These are people who have a lot of ideas, and they really want the feedback on those ideas.

And so they really just want to feel that they're making a difference. Then at the same time variety, because you have to think about what's happening now we have in our hands on a regular basis, we have an iPhone, or some kind of a smartphone, where it's basically a computer that you're walking around with all the time. And so think about to like Amazon and the expectations that people have, you can get things quick. You have things all the time available. This is just kind of the mentality. You're also thinking about the millennials as a celebrity generation.

So they're always on selfies and Snapchat, and communicating on a regular basis about what's happening throughout their day. Somebody in a session that I talked to, they had mentioned that a person actually took 30,000 selfies in a day, saw my facebook profile 30,000 selfies, right, but it's crazy. it's mind blowing. And so when we talk about the millennials, again, I just want to come back to the personal development is really critical for them, when especially when they're looking for different types of opportunities, how can they grow? And then with the impact, how can they make a difference within the organization and with the variety? It's what kind of experiences can I have within the organization as well?

Gotcha, gotcha. So I hire a lot of millennials, a lot of software engineers of this generation, and I want to look at issue straight in the eye and that there's been some stereotypes about them that aren't necessarily effective. Can you speak to any of those in any of the validity? validity of it? Yes. So I think one of the big ones that people talk about is the sense of entitlement.

And that one I would like to say is, you know, there are development areas for every generation, right? And a lot of the perceptions are coming around the entitlement, because when they come in, they've got those ideas, but they are coming in at the top of their class, you know, they're coming in, and they're heavily recruited from these companies. And when they join, it's the feeling that hey, I'm still a rock star. Hmm, yeah. And when they go in, the assumption is, Hey, didn't you hire me for the ideas that I have? Well, not necessarily, right, yet.

You have to be groomed, you have to be a little patient. And so the trick is, is not to automatically assume that the sense of entitlement is going to make them a detriment to your company, but just that how can we get them to communicate these ideas in a much better way? So I would say in this area, the coaching should be around effective communication. So when we pick when I was mentioning personal development, leadership training is something that is really important for millennials. And where they feel that leadership trainings what they need most, it's actually the communication aspect, how to gain buy in on ideas, how to know who their target audience is and how to speak to their level. And so those are the things that I would say, are the coaching areas gotcha for the millennial.

Well, I think that's important just to know that so. So in the cases that you have dealt with this before, like your graduates, what do you tell them around the messaging? How do you tell them to improve it? So what I tell them is, first of all, research, identify who it is you're speaking to know what their level is, you have to understand pain points, what are the problems that they're really trying to have you address? So many times we get so passionate about what we're doing, we forget what are we actually trying to solve, right? And so it's first of all identifying the problem first, speaking to that problem, and then being Being able to provide options always provide options.

Another thing we get really stuck on maybe like one or two ideas, but being able to collaborate and bring in more. So that's how I coach our graduates as well. Gotcha. So that seems to be kind of like the biggest, at least surfacing to the top issues that millennials have. Is there anything else that we should kind of address before we move on or anything else that you would point out to your students? I would say, again, the generational studies is very generalized.

So definitely don't categorize everyone based on what generation they're in. Because I think especially for millennials, they hate to be put in a box, you know, put them in a box and assume that they have the millennial characteristics because not everyone does. Right. Right. And you do it to me, it's a mixed bag. I've seen some super humble kids, um, called kids, right, and some that actually demonstrates some of those characteristics.

So although, although it is a label placed on the millennial generation, I think don't treat people at least for employer perspective. As individuals, right, and I think it's important to be aware of that screen for it, but at the same time look at everybody who they are as a human being. So I think that's really great stuff. So that was one of I would consider maybe a weakness of the generation, but what would you consider to be the greatest strength of the millennial generation? I think that the greatest strength that they have is the sense of variety, but also the fact that they can very quickly adapt. They're pretty adaptable.

The other thing too, is they are very good at researching information. The thing about that is being able to help them identify how to do the research. So you've got all this information at the tips of your finger, you know, in your fingertips, but kind of teaching them how to be able to actually search for information. As far as another strength of the millennial generation, they do things very quickly. It doesn't take a lot of time for them to complete a task. And I think this is also where another negative perception is is that either they're not available or they prefer to work from home all the time?

Well, it's because they can effectively do that from where they are. Right? Another thing I would say is around being very strong in the, the, the texting, texting communication, I would say, well, that is a strength. Also keep in mind that some of these conversations should also happen in person. Exactly. Right, gotcha.

Gotcha. Okay. So we're kind of walking through a really soft strength, a SWOT analysis. So we talked about the strengths, some of the weaknesses, I think some of the threats also are cons. So those characteristics, what would you consider to meet the greatest opportunities in the marketplace for millennials that have these characteristics? So today, what I do is I work with a lot of students and so with the students for those who are still trying to refine their career search opportunities, I would say are in like management training programs or in leadership development programs when you're coming out of school.

The benefit of going into these programs or these types of opportunities is that you have a variety of different experiences within a set timeframe of a training program for let's say, this full time position so you can get experience in the corporate world. finance, accounting, marketing, all within this one program. So that's really a great opportunity. other opportunities for millennials, I would say, the sky's the limit. Yeah, one of the cool things is that there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are millennials. Exactly.

And you look and you see, like, I look on LinkedIn all the time. And you know, there's often publications about what you know, top campuses are doing and who they're like, awesome, awesome inventions that people are creating and already making money as college students. I mean, there's just so much opportunity out there and at what I would say, when you find out what you want to do, don't lose it, research more, find out who you can get to help you and really run with it. And I think that's one of the greatest strengths of the millennials. But the other part is to stick with it don't just give up when it gets rough. There is some patience, there is some development, you have to go through some pain in order to be able to learn how to solve problems.

And that is one of the biggest skill sets that you're going to have to demonstrate that you have when you get into the workforce, how to solve those problems. And some of that just comes from your own personal experience. So as far as the opportunities, as long as you can demonstrate excellent problem solving, communicating in a way that you can adapt to your audience, and then having some passion. I think we'll open up many doors for you. Yeah, you actually touched on a topic because I'd say the vast majority of graduates are going to be looking to find a job but there's going to be a populace that wants to start a business. So this is going to tap into your career coaching side of getting to know the person and and all of that, but when would it be appropriate for somebody to start a business?

What are some of those themes in the individual to be like, maybe having a job, it's not the right thing for me. I need to go Got my own thing? It will what I actually have some students who do ask me that because we do have an awesome entrepreneurship program. And what I do suggest to them is I let them know Well, this is what you have to expect in running a business, you know, you have to be able to identify your target audience, develop the whole marketing plan, know how to run a business. So in order for you to be successful and running a business, you first have to have strong business acumen, you have to know the skill that you are wanting to sell or the service that you're wanting to sell. You also have to know your target audience and then you continuously have to have personal development in order to achieve that.

The challenge for someone who is just starting as a new graduate is if you do not have those experiences, say from internships or other type of work experience, then you may not have as much experience and how to work with other people. And so if you're not going to have those experiences, find those experiences and other ways. volunteer at nonprofit organizations, join student organizations get any kind of a job just to see what it's like to be in the workforce even for a little bit. And then really tap into people resources, find people who are doing exactly what you want to be doing, seek mentors. And then continuously, you're just always working on yourself as a business owner. And so also know an exit strategy.

When are you? When are you willing to say, Okay, I have not met my goal. This is what I have to do now. Yeah. Love it. Love it.

Love it. So so I think that's great information from an entrepreneurial perspective. And you know, Marie Forleo, she says, clarity doesn't come from thinking or understanding it comes from action. And at least in my experience, as well, I think Judy can can speak to this too, is you get more clear about what you want to do when you do things and especially if you're one of those entrepreneurs out there, you got to kind of try to do a bunch of different things, be willing to fail and And follow your passion. So I think that's really great stuff. So thanks for sharing that.

But back to the job seeker, right? Let's say that they're a millennial just graduating from college or they're done graduated for college. And this is like eight months after they graduated. But they're still struggling to find a job. What do you think is going there? And how would you help them?

So when we have students who are experiencing this, a lot of times, the reason why they've gotten there is because they didn't do the activities in their education that would make them a competitive candidate. So to understand that, first understand that the competitive candidate is somebody who had least at this point has maybe one to two internships, right, relevant to what it is that they want to do. They are active in student organizations. They are strong academically. They have a variety of different academic projects that demonstrate again, the passion for their field, right. So without those, then you are looking at someone who is no longer competitive and the challenge is Okay, what are the experiences that you can have at this point in order to market yourself effectively.

And so what we do is we talk about different opportunities. Like say, for example, a person wants to get into consulting, they just got out of school. So what we do is we identify mentors for them, we help them do a lot of networking. So at this point, it's about getting to help you get people to take your resume out of that resume stack out of the applicant tracking system. So networking is critical. At the same time, you're networking for informational interviews to identify, well, how am I going to position myself as a top candidate for the job at this point?

Because for many positions, as long as you were within a year of graduating, you are still considered a new graduate. So offer Yeah, so it's refreshing so you can still be considered as a new graduate. And so there are still opportunities available. Some students will decide to go into a master's program, they didn't pursue something or find something after they graduated with their budget. But the focus that I work with them on is how to, then let's look at your resume. What are the skills that you have?

Let's find you some mentors. Let's get you networked, talk and refine, what are their target audience who are your target companies specifically, and we work from there. And for the most part, they've been successful. It's just now having to identify maybe what we call or what they call Lily padding. So kind of getting one experience in another company in order to gain the experience you need to move to the role that you really want. Yeah.

And so, which is if you think about it, what actually should have happened when they're in school with those internships. Awesome. Loving a lot of keynotes that that I want to help further elaborate on is that when I graduate from college, I thought all the companies were just gonna roll out the red carpet, just like what you said, you're actually now in the entry level market, which pretty much objectively is the most brutal market competition you can have because really, you don't have a lot of experience. You have no competitive advantages. So it's usually the person that already has some kind of experience doing what they're shooting to do that gets the job. And one thing I want to throw out there, there is nothing wrong about getting an internship.

After you graduate from college, as long as you know, it's taking you to where you want to go. So that is really absolute really good stuff. So GDS or anything else that we should know about millennials to serve this audience and maybe even employers looking to hire them. So employers looking to hire millennials, develop programs within your, within your companies that will teach them leadership, you want to give them mentors as well. So mentor programs within an organization works really awesome. And at the same time, reverse mentorship is something to consider.

These are people who want to make an impact in the business and so if you are looking for someone to say train your team on social media best practices, or you know things that they're learning in school, that you've been so out of touch on because you're not there. leverage the information that they're bringing from their education and let them reverse mentor you. So identify a mentor who can kind of trade information with them, so that they can help them with the soft skills that they need, like the problem solving the communication, and then allowing them to also demonstrate what they're good at. So that's a way that they can make an impact. Then also start thinking about your recruiting practices when you are trying to hire the millennials. It's all about the experience.

It's really about the relationship. They are really wanting someone who makes them feel like a family. And I think that's true for most recruiting experiences. But when you think about how competitive it is, now, when people are trying to hire students and campus hires, the types of things that they do, they do so many networking events, mixers, they have dinners together, they bring you into the office and all that before they even extend an offer but it's just again buy in because there is a lot of there's a lot of options. petition with employers as well to seek the best candidates across all the universities. So think about the experience that you're offering in your recruiting, what are the personal development programs in your companies, and then also how you can allow them to make an impact within the organization?

Awesome. That is a lot of value, Judy, appreciate it, you're probably the right person to break from Awesome. Well, let's shift gears and jump into some general job seeking best practices. And I want to jump into, let's say, further down the road, let's say, let's say two, three years after somebody graduates and their inner career already, right. And then they're sort of scratching their head, and they're like, Oh, my gosh, this is not what I wanted to do. How would you coach somebody who's wanting to completely shift gears into a completely different career, but doesn't have the confidence that man, it might be too late to do this.

So one of the biggest things that I believe in is to increase your confidence, increase your competence, and a lot of times the competence is, well, what do I What can I bring to the table? What what are my offerings and then Also the other side of the competence is understanding well, who is it that I really want to serve? And what do they care about? So we talked about this as a whole, we talked about, well, eventually it's thinking about a brand. But what do you want to be known for? And so when somebody is looking at making your transition, it's a really simple exercise.

And so many times we keep all this information in our head. And that's really where the fear keeps coming, because you don't do anything with it. So it's a simple thing of what I call a brain dump. You take a sheet of paper, you divided it into four quadrants, first quadrant, you put Well, what are the things that I enjoy doing? Mm hmm. Really simple.

Get it out of your head. The next one, what are the skills that I have? or What am I good at doing? The next thing is, well, what do I not like doing? And then the last one is, if I imagined working in my dream job five years from now, what does that look like? and really think about it like, what's the environment?

Am I working from home? Am I in front of a large audience? On a tedtalk stage, am I, you know, serving food? Anything? It's really what are you? What do you envision for yourself.

And so in the beginning, starting with bad idea, and increasing your competence in that way, will get you in a path to start uncovering those fears that are preventing you from actually achieving those. So that's really what I start with my clients and doing whenever they're identifying which way they want to go. Again, really simple, but for whatever reason, even just getting to that point, it's so hard. And so it is a little bit of hand holding as well, and supporting them and letting them know everything's gonna be okay. And you give them examples of all the people who failed. But the people who you know, have you read the book, The Originals by Adam Grant talks about, it's called the originals by Adam Grant, okay.

It's something that talks about, basically the most creative and innovative people. So the most innovative and creative people are the ones who have failed the most because they've also tried them. Right. And so when you think about that you kind of have to fail. And you really have to be okay with failing. And you have to be okay with telling your story about your failures.

Because that's where you get people to really buy into who you are. And that you can be a success. And then you have to believe it. Yeah, yeah. And you know, especially when you are, when you have a job that's creating income, it's paying your bills, you don't necessarily have to completely burn the bridge, you could do things part time, you can volunteer, you can learn more about yourself. And that's, that's a way to slowly gain certainty that the path that you want to travel is a path that you want to travel.

So I think that's a good takeaway, too. Yeah, absolutely. Baby steps, you don't have to immediately quit. Totally. So I know this is kind of a super basic kind of question, but you've seen probably as many resumes as I have, what's the best advice you can give anyone on structure, resume, continent resume and all that? quantify your experience?

Okay, well, there's two things, okay. So first, quantify your experience, which really means Every single bullet point that you put on your resume needs to answer four things. What is the problem that I was tasked to solve? What did I do to solve it? What happened? Or what were the results?

And who was involved? And that's really what you need in a strong resume. Now, in order to find out well, what is the experience that I need to quantify what is the experience that my employer is seeking mirrored to a job description, your resume should be tailored to a job description every time you apply. And if it's not, we can tell because especially when you send in a cover letter or something where it says thank you. So I'm interested in applying for your position because I'm very interested in your company's career development opportunities. This is the position I'm applying for.

These are all my skills and the problem with that is that in your resume and in your cover letter and all of your marketing materials, you need to specifically speak to your target audience Don't make it too generalized either, right. So the more narrow You can get in your resume to a job description, I'd say that's going to be a star quality for you. And you're also fun when it comes to length. Well, for students, we recommend for millennials, you really shouldn't have more than one page. And we always encourage to keep it within one page anyways, just because as a recruiter, we spend like how long? We say 20 seconds.

Yeah, for me, it was like, five, six seconds. Right? Like, you don't even get to the second page. Sure. And so it's really good to make sure if you're gonna go into page two, the most important information needs to be on page one. Right?

Right. And for just that specific reason that hiring managers recruiters look at resumes, literally for like just a few seconds. To me, it's a marketing tool, and that's it the purpose of resumes to land you a meeting. So whenever I coach candidates to apply for a job, yes, have a resume, have a cover letter tailored for everything submitted apply, but that's the first step. So I always recommend people to reach out so what are your best practices after somebody applies now what So after someone applies absolutely network and LinkedIn is such a great tool, think about it as the networking space that never stops, it's on 24 seven at this point, they've got 433 million people on LinkedIn across over 200 countries, that's huge. And so you can tap into networks that you that exist within your LinkedIn space, and identify people who can help you get your resume to the stack.

So these are going to be people who currently have the roles that you want and the companies you want to work for hiring managers, recruiters, people in your network, who you identified as having that dream job that you want, right, and then connecting with them and then learning more information about those roles. So the networking aspect is critical because at the same time, they can also help you identify how to be stronger in the interview process, right. So some of the tips and tricks that most people wouldn't immediately know about by reading the company's website or the job. Description. So the networking is absolutely critical. Yeah, I always tell people looking for jobs that nothing happens until you communicate your value to someone who makes a decision.

Because I can't think of I can think of maybe one person in 10 years, I got hired strictly off of a resume. But that was a super rare, rare skill set. So the highest value event that can take place in the job search process is meeting someone who makes a decision. And what Judy said was key. You can use LinkedIn as an amazing research tool. Find out who knows this person in your network?

What's what's the most direct path to the person that makes this decision and network your way to them? sidestep the whole HR process? Yes, as HR, you I'm saying, sidestep us right and go to the person that makes the decision. That's really good stuff. So let's say you get that meeting. How do you prepare for the interview?

Oh, okay. So for this one, it goes back to the branding. So again, identifying your target audience, your target audience, this time being the specific employer, and then reviewing the job description making sure that you completely understand every single detail, I tell my candidates or my students or anyone that I talked to literally analyze the job description, go through each bullet point and specifically write down examples of stories. You want to come up with really strong stories to demonstrate your experiences, like if they're saying we're looking for a person with strong communication skills. Well, we want a story where maybe you had to overcome a communication challenge with somebody you were working with on your team. Yeah.

So a question might be asked Tell me about a time that you worked with a difficult person. And and the reason why we ask these questions. First of all, the fact that you got to the interview, congratulations. That means that they identified you as somebody who met the qualifications for the job to get the interview. What they're really trying to identify is Are you someone I want to work with my most critical clients? Are you someone who is going to I'm going to enjoy working with on a daily basis are you going to fit in within my culture?

So a lot of the questions are geared around behavioral interview questions, which gives us an indicator based on past behavior, what you're going to do in the future and so in the preparation phase coming up with critical stories that demonstrate your communication, your leadership, your teamwork, your initiative and innovation, those are going to be demonstrations of your problem solving each of those areas. So it's the day of the interview and one of the most common questions asked that everyone really fears is what's your greatest weakness? How do you coach somebody to deal with that? So the greatest weakness will one you want to make sure it's something that is acceptable like an acceptable norm? Yeah. Okay, first of all, make an acceptable norm don't ever give a weakness.

You know, we've been recruiters we've heard some interesting stories. I've heard some interesting stories about kleptomaniacs. Okay. I don't even know what they were thinking with the candidate you're absolutely not. Be sure that it's one. it's legal.

It's ethical. It's a social norm. First of all. The other thing when we're saying we're weakness, well, generally what we're trying to identify is how are you? Are you aware that you have a personal development that you have to work on? Yeah.

And to, are you actively working on it? Sure. That's what we're trying to figure out. And what I tell our students is they ask you because we know you're going to fail, right? You're not perfect. Everyone's going to fail the job at some point and your weakness and how you're managing to your weaknesses is going to give us a good example.

So some good ones. People will try to turn their weaknesses into strengths or right so or vice versa, like I'm too much of a perfectionist, the worst thing anyone? Everyone says it's okay. All the time. Yeah, it's like they went on Glassdoor. And that's what everybody said.

So I'll say that too. Right? I'm the strongest ones that I've heard are ones where you can tell that it wasn't like what you said can mom they had a really good story like for example, somebody He had given me an idea of how it was really difficult for them to learn how to say no to people that they worked with. Yeah. And as a result, they actually got the, you know, they started getting behind on their deliverables because they didn't know how to manage their time whenever they were helping. And so I thought that was a really great weakness.

And while it is a weakness, you don't want to see that in the workplace. I really keyed in on what was their process for overcoming it. And it was a very strong process. And so that person became a great candidate. And also, whenever I've asked a question, I'm engaging for a couple things. Number one, I'm looking for self awareness.

Do you know your strengths and weaknesses? There is no such thing as a perfect human being. And number two, you're looking for authenticity, right? So I have been asked this question many times. And the truth is, I am really bad at math. I could never be an accountant, a CFO, a managing director of some kind of financial company.

Good, thank goodness, I found a career the place that my natural strengths, that's one of them. And the other one also as historically, maybe it's because my personality type I've just never really been great at dealing with criticism nor giving any But knowing that I'm aware of this helps me move forward. So I analyze my criticism by who is giving this to me? Is it some troll on Facebook? Or is it somebody who really loves and cares about me that's really trying to help me. Is it objective?

And is there also a nugget of truth in it, but that's the truth. I just have not really been good at dealing with criticism. And those are my weakness things. So it's acknowledging a truth about yourself, saying what you're doing to improve upon it. And then lessons learned along the way. I think that's the best way to deal with.

Absolutely cool, so I need to write that down. I know it came out of the authenticity. Cool. So um, so you finished the interview? What's the best way to follow up and keep an amazing impression going on? So of course, thank you.

Thank you, sir. Nice. And I would say, you know, kind of going back to the generational studies, if the person you're interviewing with is like a baby boomer or a traditionalist, handwritten, thank you notes go a really long way. Yeah. So actually You know, cursive is a dying thing. Don't let it die pick up on handwriting and cursive.

And yeah, and when you are sending a thank you note, if you're going to send an email, thank you note, at least reference something maybe interesting in the conversation that you actually have, and reiterate why you're interested in the organization. And then beyond that, I would say ask for feedback. Something good to do is to really get an idea for Well, at the same time, this is a way for you to know well, what can I improve upon the next time that I interview? And so recruiters are very willing to give feedback at times, and not everyone is, but if they are, they will give you honest and straightforward feedback. So don't be afraid to ask. And then the other part of that, I say journal the experience, this is continuous improvement.

So identify Well, this was the question that was the hardest one for me to answer or this one was I really felt really great about my Tell me about yourself question. today. I'm journaling because then you can kind of see Well, this is the progress I've been making. And this is how been growing? Yeah. Love it.

Love it. Love it love it. So we're we're kind of rounding off the process of the entire job search process. So we got the resume, we landed the interview, we did well in the interview, we followed up. And I can write a book on this topic, but give us just a few points on offer negotiation. And we'll kind of close with that.

A lot of people have differences of opinion, or there's so much around that right. Yeah. So when I was recruiting, I was recruiting for salespeople. And so when I was recruiting for sales, it was very interesting for me if they didn't try to negotiate the offer, then that really wasn't a strong selling point for me. Yes, for sales, right. But with the offer, if you are in this position, do your best to not give your number away without hearing what their number is.

But always make sure if you're going to start negotiating, that you're willing to walk away because you might you don't want to burn that bridge and sometimes if you push too hard, you have to know that they might rescind the offer. So always make sure that you're aware of that, come into the negotiation process, well informed. You want to go through the interview process, making sure you ask enough questions to identify what you're going to be doing on the job. And that way you can do your research, either through other people who work in the company, other people who work for competitors are in the same industry or even using things like payscale.com salary.com, Glassdoor to identify salary points. You want to get this research done and come up with a range that you think is suitable, right? In the negotiation process.

If they ask you, well, what is the salary that what is your desired salary? The response should be well, may I ask a little bit more about what is the salary range for this position? So that's that first and then that will let you know, okay, I'm not low balling myself, or I'm not shooting myself in the foot by asking you something completely unrealistic, and then just kind of go from there. Now the other thing too, salary is not the only thing that you can negotiate on these days. Benefits perks. Thank you.

With different types of organizations, they have different perks that you can negotiate on. So always go in with the mindset of a total compensation package, as opposed to just salary. Awesome. Wow, that covers everything, Judy, that was pretty amazing. Thank you for all of that the millennial piece, the general job search practices, people are going to fall in love with you after they seem pretty sure. So Judy, if they do fall in love with you and want to work with you directly, how do they follow you?

So I am on LinkedIn. And you can also follow me on Facebook on YouTube. And I'm also on Twitter. on a weekly basis, I do motivational videos. It's basically motivation Monday, it's really quick. It's under a minute and I do post it on my YouTube channel, my Facebook site as well as LinkedIn, but they're really just short little messages to get you inspired to continue in your career search, continue pursuing your passion, or just like Have a great day.

So follow me there. Love it. Well, Judy, I really appreciate this. I personally find your very inspiring your content has been amazing. I'm glad that we're connection. So thank you for doing so much truly awesome.

Well, thank you all for tuning in for this edition of 30 days to hired. So good luck out there on the job search and we look forward to connecting with you soon. Thank you. Thank you