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OhHello - Small Things
37 Plays11 months ago
Small things.
That was the theme of Rishad Tobaccowala's latest newsletter. Many have posted about these amazing musings and essays in the past- go subscribe.
Richy Glassberg, an esteemed "Hello" (active mentor on the OhHello.io 🌞☕️ platform), and I were chatting Monday night about "the small things" ...and why they ALWAYS matter.
It's the small things that are memorable.
It's the small things that make you stick out.
It's the small things that make life remarkable.
It's the small things that showcase how your authenticity matters.
We decided to record a quick pod on "small things" (episode 84 - recorded an hour ago) and why they matter.
From Linkedin etiquette to hashtag#job hunting (SafeGuard Privacy) as a hashtag#candidate + hashtag#hiring manager, to what sets someone apart hashtag#career growth, how and why to follow-up with people hashtag#opentowork, and then a non-sponsored quip on how Liquid Death genuinely is the best marketing company in the world (for the past several years).
We did similar version off-the-cuff recordings w/ other OhHello.io 🌞☕️ mentors (Camille Fetter + Kevin Hein). If you like these tips, advice, etc - our OhHello tribe will bring ya more! Just let us know if you're finding them helpful.
Small things matter. Move fast...and MSH!
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Transcript
Introduction and Spontaneity
00:00:04
Speaker
There we go, Richie. There we go. There we go. Oh. No rhythm whatsoever. Absolutely none. Look at both of us. None. None. Oh, hello, Richie. How are you? Oh, hello, Jeremy. How's it going? It's awesome. Happy Wednesday. Happy Wednesday. Shoot, now I'm going to have to put this out on a Wednesday. I'm kidding. Richie, you and I were catching up two nights ago on life in something that
00:00:34
Speaker
that you knew that I would find relevant to our Oh, hello community. And so we said on Monday night when we're catching up, why don't we do a quick pod on this? Why don't we talk about this? And so the theme for this one, there's no rehearsal. There's no formality. It's completely different
Rashad's Influence and Newsletter
00:00:50
Speaker
than other pods.
00:00:52
Speaker
the small things. So you and I both read Rashad's Bakawala's Sunday newsletter that goes into tens of thousands of inboxes. And this past Sunday was about the small things. And you were telling me specifically about a role that you had just posted for your company. And you were looping me in. Why don't you share a little bit about that with our audience? So let's talk about the small things, right?
00:01:19
Speaker
The small things in your job search matter. And if you don't read Rashad, you should get it. You should just Google Rashad Taktabakawal. It's a free newsletter. I think it's over
LinkedIn Job Post Response
00:01:28
Speaker
100,000 people now. It's amazing. Influencers around the world. So we had, unfortunately, our VPS sales leave. And we wrote a job description.
00:01:39
Speaker
We gave specific instructions on how to apply and I use the paid part of LinkedIn. I just didn't post it on my feed and we use the paid thing on LinkedIn. And in 52 hours, we got 440 plus resumes, right? Yay, us, right? Right, Jeremy? Yeah, it's great. Maybe.
00:02:01
Speaker
So let's talk about the little things. We wrote a job description, very detailed. There were two screener questions on the bottom, and there was very specific instructions on how to apply for the job. How many people, Jeremy, do you think followed that?
00:02:16
Speaker
What were the instructions? What were the two instructions that you would list? The screener questions were very, they were very easy bars to clear. Have you sold SaaS? Have you sold to, and I'm paraphrasing, have you sold to the legal community? And if you've done those two things, apply here. Just send an email with your resume to apply at blah, blah, blah, right? We had an email, very simple email address. And you had 440 responses on LinkedIn. Yeah, in 52 hours.
00:02:47
Speaker
So how many do you think actually followed the instruction? Out of between 400 and 500 people, I would guess about 10% actually read it and follow the instructions. So call it 40, 45, somewhere in there. I would have been happy with that. Low single digits, not percentage, low single digits. So legit then, 1%, 1%.
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, 1%. Now, let's talk about this. This is a VP of sales job for what I think is a hot internet company, you know, a hot startup, excuse me.
Personalization in Job Applications
00:03:25
Speaker
I'm biased, we got great backers, great people, we're doing great things, a lot of press about us. And about approximately 90 plus of those candidates reached out to connect with me on LinkedIn. So what do you think was wrong about that?
00:03:43
Speaker
Okay, so these candidates, they reached out to connect. Did they send you a personalized message to connect? Oh my God, Jeremy, you would think they would, right? You would think they would. So out of 90 people that say that they're salespeople that want a VPS sales job, reporting to the CEO, you know, good compensation, good equity,
00:04:09
Speaker
Again, mid-single digits wrote a note. And Jeremy, this is what drove me crazy when we were talking the other night. It is so easy. Just write, add a note. And this isn't, I'm not busting on people. This is, hey, it's a competitive world out there. It's a competitive job marketplace.
00:04:27
Speaker
I get that people that don't have the background want to apply for the job, aspiration, all that stuff. You can't tell me you want to be ahead of sales and you can't write a personal note. Absolutely. All you posted the job, I sent my resume and I did this. Hey Richie, I saw you went to blah, blah, blah. Hey Richie, I'm really interested in news. Saw you were in news. Hey Richie, anything. You could have said anything. You could have said, hey Richie, dog food.
00:04:51
Speaker
I don't care. But you didn't even take the time to write a personal note. And you want me to hire you as your head of sales? I'm sorry. Out of the five. It's mind boggling to me. It's mind boggling. That's not math, Jeremy. Now the 500 tried to connect and out of that mid single digits actually wrote a note. So let's talk about those mid single digits then. So of the four or five people that wrote a note, what's the note entail?
00:05:21
Speaker
I don't remember, Jimmy, it's like, hey, I saw your job posting, wanna pitch the job. One of them actually looked at my background and made a mention of a company that they were connected to. I liked that, that was good. But it was just- They personalized it. Yeah, they personalized it. Look, I mean, the good and the bad of LinkedIn, the good of LinkedIn is the network effect. You can find out about jobs and other things. Yeah, of course. The bad is it's like the common app in college. You're just hitting submit.
00:05:50
Speaker
And that's not good, right? You're just hitting submit. They're not reading the
Company's Follow-up Strategy
00:05:55
Speaker
job description. They're not following very simple instructions. I didn't give them really high bars to jump through, Jeremy. It was literally, do you do these two things? If you do, just send an email to here. Well, so Richie, we know the problems. What would the solutions be for this specifically? If for your guidance and advice as an Oh, hello mentor, as someone who is well-respected within our ecosystem,
00:06:18
Speaker
How would you advise sales leaders, marketing leaders? So first of all, don't apply for every job out there. You're not right for every job out there, right? Second of all, read the job description to the end.
00:06:34
Speaker
If it tells you they're only looking for blue and you're yellow, don't do it. If they're telling you it's looking for blue and green and you're kind of purple, which is a combination of blue and green, great. Say, look, I'm here, but I'm here. If it tells you to do something specific, do that specific thing. In today's world, in today's economic climate, where it's so hard to sell anything, do anything, be a service industry, if you can't follow basic instructions, you're not going to make the cut.
00:07:03
Speaker
And I think, you know, and then there's easy stuff. Personalize your invite to people, right? Now let's talk about the other side, Jeremy, right? What did we do as a company? Because that's just as important. I hear from a ton of people out there, right? And there's a responsibility on the job posting side. I hear from a ton of people out there. I never heard back. They ghosted me. We actually went through all 440 plus. We wrote a note to every single one. Some of them were standardized because we had it because of time.
00:07:33
Speaker
We looked through those, and even though you didn't do it right, and you didn't send a personalized note, we looked at 30 to 40 that we moved over to a person who actually wrote a second set of greener questions, did a phone call with everybody, and had people have a second shot at it.
00:07:51
Speaker
And then from those, we cut it down and we interviewed about six. And then, unfortunately, we didn't find the right person, but every single person got a response. People that didn't follow the rules actually got a second chance at it to go through a very detailed screener question. And I know you shouldn't do that on the first time, Jeremy. You don't wanna ask people all those specifics, but you can, I think, as a hiring company, use a very detailed second line of defense of screener questions
00:08:20
Speaker
to make sure that you're talking to the right people. And Richie, let me ask you this. Of those that applied and once you followed up with them and your team followed up with them, what were their next steps? Did they send you thank you notes? I didn't get your response. I would say for acknowledge the response that we sent to people because I understand it's a hard world out there putting on the other side of it.
00:08:47
Speaker
I feel like you can't ghost people and you have to show people courtesy. And we tried. We tried our best to do that. And I'm sure not everybody's happy with it, but we followed up with anybody. We didn't ghost anybody in the process. And it's hard. You've been told that you're not right for the job. People's feelings are hurt, Jeremy. I get it.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yes, feelings are hurt, but because in this kind of economic climate and within the greater tech industry with many layoffs, the fact that your team took the time to at least follow up with everyone that says a lot about what you're trying to do, but also coming out here to provide the guidance advice to personalize, to follow up and to essentially for everyone that applied to be able to
00:09:32
Speaker
Do something different. Stick out from everybody else. Jeremy, that's
Standing Out in Job Market
00:09:36
Speaker
it. In a competitive world, read it. Follow the directions. You've got to stand out.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yep. You know, your sales on a zoom is going to be a not great, uh, experience for anybody. And we're all struggling how to get in any, any line of business sales is the number one driver, right? And how do we get through this COVID world post COVID world with not in the offices? And how do you break through? If you can't break through applying for the job, I can't believe, or no sales hire will believe you can break through.
00:10:13
Speaker
on your day to
Conclusion and Thanks
00:10:14
Speaker
day. Richie, this has been awesome. Thank you for for the idea to come on and talk about this. I love it. Everybody. Thank you. Let's talk about liquid death. That should be the new sponsor of the Oh, hello. Yeah, legit best branding out there. Best marketing. I've had all of us that are in marketing and advertising has had conversations over the past four or five years about water in a can. And it's just genius. It's genius.
00:11:09
Speaker
All right, Richie. Thanks. Thanks, everybody.