Transcript
Speaker: Hey Nick, how are you?
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: How are you doing Scott?
Speaker: So I really appreciate you taking the time to have a conversation today.
Speaker: Really looking just to get to know a little bit about you.
Speaker: And, you know, we're focusing on conversations with hiring managers.
Speaker: to get a sense with the changing market, you know, what's important, what people are looking for.
Speaker: So if you don't mind, do you want to just take a second to tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, your company and anything that, you know, you would want people to know?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So my name is Nick Fazalia.
Speaker: I've been in IT for half my life and I'm
Speaker: Been mainly in the Pittsburgh area, but I bounced around quite a bit.
Speaker: And I'm currently working at SAE International.
Speaker: I'm part of the senior leadership team here.
Speaker: And I'm involved in a lot of different aspects.
Speaker: My newest mission in life right now is building out our new enterprise data program, including knowledge graphs and data science and machine learning capabilities.
Speaker: So just looking for talent as usual, always hiring.
Speaker: Were you always into technology, like even growing up, or what kind of put you in that direction?
Speaker: Total luck.
Speaker: I grew up on a dairy farm.
Speaker: I bought my first computer when I was in college.
Speaker: So, you know, my Uncle Donnie said, Nicky, you want to make money going to computers?
Speaker: So I did.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: What was life like on a dairy farm?
Speaker: Yeah?
Speaker: Was it like everything you would imagine up at the crack of dog?
Speaker: Was it like... Well, if you ask my dad, none of us kids had to work for a living, but his dad would say the same thing about him.
Speaker: It's easier every generation, but it was a lot of hard work.
Speaker: Does your family still have it?
Speaker: Yeah, we do.
Speaker: We do.
Speaker: I was just up there.
Speaker: I try to get up there as much as I can.
Speaker: It's kind of a little safe haven.
Speaker: There's no cell signal, no Wi-Fi.
Speaker: It's just out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker: Do they still put you to work when you go visit?
Speaker: No, not anymore.
Speaker: I go up there.
Speaker: I just help them out now.
Speaker: They're retired.
Speaker: So you bought your first computer in college.
Speaker: And it was just a, just a story from there.
Speaker: A disaster go on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I turned the computer on and it got on fire.
Speaker: I paid 200 bucks for it from this guy.
Speaker: I was working with a pizza hut and, um, needless to say, I was upset and he fixed it.
Speaker: And, uh, you know, it was, it was my,
Speaker: first awakening into the world of technology because I couldn't figure it out to save my life.
Speaker: So I asked him for help and he said, RTFM, what's that?
Speaker: Read the manual.
Speaker: Well, thanks a lot.
Speaker: So that was my last experience with Linux for quite some time because then I went and found out that Windows was easier for me to figure out.
Speaker: And no, college was rough.
Speaker: I did not keep up with anybody because it,
Speaker: I signed up for the first thing I had the word computer in it, which was applied computer science.
Speaker: I took typewriting in school.
Speaker: Yeah, it was a rough journey, but then I got an internship and got some really great mentors.
Speaker: And once I didn't understand a thing in school, but once I was at work all day, every day, and these people showed me what to read and how it worked and took the time out of their lives to teach me, it just clicked.
Speaker: I couldn't get out of school fast enough at that point.
Speaker: I wanted to go right to work, and I loved it ever since.
Speaker: And I worked through just about every kind of tech stack there was.
Speaker: And next thing you know, an architect working out in Manhattan on Wall Street, and it was fun.
Speaker: And then I got into leadership, and I had an opportunity for it, and it was just
Speaker: trial by fire it was uh a lot of critical care applications in accounting and i made it but i actually found out i like the leadership part more than the tech like i still love technology and you know i have all the toys and everything but and i still help program every now and then but i actually
Speaker: I get more joy and satisfaction out of solving people problems, running a business and dealing with hundreds of people and operational efficiencies and the tech stacks to support everybody.
Speaker: You know, it's all about platforms and value streams anymore.
Speaker: It's a different way of thinking.
Speaker: And I just find it much more challenging than building the software ever was.
Speaker: And it's more fulfilling to me.
Speaker: So that's why I'm here.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, you know, and I would I would guess, you know, because you mentioned earlier that, you know, you had some some really good mentors, you know, that helped you see the value and leadership.
Speaker: I've had similar experiences myself where, you know, I never intended to manage people or anything like that.
Speaker: But, you know, I, you know,
Speaker: I had some really good mentors that showed me that, you know, the value that you can provide to individuals.
Speaker: Were there any specific, you know, lessons learned from any mentors over the years that have stuck with you now that you're mentoring people?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'll give a shout out to Doug Fisher.
Speaker: He told me, he probably doesn't even remember.
Speaker: It was just something he said off of, you know, we're just,
Speaker: hanging out of the one day and he said the difference between, well, he said two things.
Speaker: He said the difference between a good engineer and a great engineer is their ability to debug a problem.
Speaker: And he's right.
Speaker: I mean, you can take anybody that's having a hard time figuring an issue out and somebody who's great at it, I mean, they'll just come in and ask why five times.
Speaker: And then the next thing you know, it's solved.
Speaker: And then the other thing he taught me, which I really took to heart was anybody that's exceptional is going to come in the next day and think what they did yesterday was not good.
Speaker: If you're consistently learning and watching what other people do and trying your best, you'll be better every day.
Speaker: And you'll look back and say, man, why did I do it that way?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So it's just always been about chasing after who's the next best person to model myself after.
Speaker: And then now you're under the pressure to be the person that hopefully other people are modeling themselves after.
Speaker: Selfishly, I really enjoy...
Speaker: like book of the month clubs and whiteboarding sessions.
Speaker: And just, I mean, I, the guy that works for me, Craig Tusser, uh, he was a principal back in engineering.
Speaker: He wanted to be a manager.
Speaker: He's killing it.
Speaker: I have so much fun talking to him and going over what kind of books to read and different ways of managing his team and the things that he had to look out for.
Speaker: I, I just really enjoy it.
Speaker: It's like, um,
Speaker: I don't know how to describe it, but you're putting your time and energy into your team and you're watching them become successful and they grow and they're happy.
Speaker: And I don't know, I just, I'm trying the best I can to always be the boss I wish I had.
Speaker: That is a really great philosophy.
Speaker: You mentioned Book of the Months and some books.
Speaker: Are there any books that you'd recommend from a leadership perspective?
Speaker: Depends who I'm talking to.
Speaker: So things change over time, but because I went through computer science, I still have a strong belief that understanding the concepts are critical in technology.
Speaker: I think with today's tools, especially with AI and co-pilot and everything coming out, it's easier for people to get up and running.
Speaker: But you still have to put the time in to understand how things operate and why they operate that way.
Speaker: There's so many different architectural decisions to make.
Speaker: There's so many different design patterns and platforms to think about between DevOps, MLOps, DevSecOps.
Speaker: You know, are you going to use microservices in the back end or are you so small of a startup that you're going to start with a monolith and then you're going to break it apart over time?
Speaker: Do you need enterprise service buses or, you know,
Speaker: business process modeling, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: I mean, the decisions go on and on and on.
Speaker: So for engineers, I would say start with the fundamentals, even go back to the gang of four, just start learning some design patterns and why certain things are built the way they are.
Speaker: Because once you understand the concepts of programming itself, switching languages isn't that hard.
Speaker: You know, whether you're going from C Sharp to Java to Python, once you understand the concept of what you're trying to do and how memory works and how performance works with, you know, multi-threading or multi-processing, you know, all the little quirks if you're running on a Windows server or a Linux server.
Speaker: So just start with the fundamentals and just keep thinking.
Speaker: You know, you got to think of it, a lot of us like to play video games.
Speaker: I think of working in IT like an RPG.
Speaker: So the more skills you learn, you know, you're leveling up.
Speaker: And, you know, you just know what tools to use based on the problem at hand.
Speaker: And there's some great books, you know.
Speaker: Kind of could go on and on, but, you know.
Speaker: if I'm, when it comes to leadership, like talking to managers and directors and executives, anything written by the IT revolution crowd, you know, the people that wrote like the Phoenix project, gold, it's all gold.
Speaker: It's incredible.
Speaker: What is it focused on?
Speaker: Like what is it kind of,
Speaker: So there's a swath of different books.
Speaker: The most popular one that came about was called The Phoenix Project.
Speaker: And it drew heavily on some books from the 80s called The Goal and Beyond the Goal.
Speaker: And it talks about, I don't know how to put it.
Speaker: talked about, you know, working with a different mentality and it's all about focus, flow and joy, right?
Speaker: So if, and there's another book called, you know, making work visible and, you know, after the Phoenix project, there's the unicorn project, and then there's another one and another one and all these books, they all kind of have the same mantra.
Speaker: It's about,
Speaker: everybody talks about agile, right?
Speaker: And scrum project management or, you know, using lean approaches and this and that, but very rarely are you gonna find any literature that gives you step-by-step instructions on how to try something out, right?
Speaker: Everything's a framework and then you figure it out for yourself.
Speaker: So what's cool about these books is the fact that they're written in a first person point of view.
Speaker: So you're going through this journey
Speaker: in the view of a person that's at a job that so many of us have been in where nothing's working right.
Speaker: Somebody's a bottleneck, you know, pressure's on and, you know, the, the main character is just all of a sudden, you know, there's this person that comes into their life and they're, they start pointing them into the direction, but they don't tell them what to do.
Speaker: They just start getting them to think differently.
Speaker: And then throughout the story, they start having these, um,
Speaker: Epiphanies.
Speaker: And, you know, when you start to think about software, it, you know, it resembles a manufacturing line.
Speaker: You have requirements coming in, they need to be vetted and estimated, and then they get developed and tested and rolled out through production.
Speaker: Well, if you go to another one of the books called Project to Product, it starts talking about value streams and how it's important to look at the entire throughput, the, you know, the, um,
Speaker: your lead times from soup to nuts, right?
Speaker: And you can even extrapolate that beyond IT.
Speaker: How long did it take for somebody in the business to come up with the idea in the first place through the time it actually got out to the customer?
Speaker: It's not just, IT's just a part, right?
Speaker: And then if you take another one of the books, team topologies, it talks about the four different types of team structures, uh, and how you had platform teams and value stream teams and facilitators and specialists.
Speaker: And it just gets you thinking differently about all this stuff.
Speaker: Um, you know, working in.
Speaker: and DOD contracts and stuff like that in the past, everything's always been Gantt charts and products and requirements specs.
Speaker: And even at some places where we've done quote unquote agile, we still, you know, we didn't have a good relationship with the product owners of the business and we ended up having everything written in extreme details because it was always a finger pointing thing and it quickly turned from,
Speaker: collaboration over documentation to just documentation because there's no collaboration anymore.
Speaker: So, you know, it's just, it's just neat.
Speaker: And all those things come into play and all those books are in,
Speaker: Just like all the books for integration patterns and enterprise architecture patterns for the engineers, these books are like patterns for leaders and ways of solving your particular puzzle.
Speaker: And it's really cool because I've worked at so many different companies.
Speaker: They all have problems, a lot of similar problems too, but the difference is that every single company is the people.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So dealing with different personalities and all this stuff, it makes it very complicated how people work together.
Speaker: That's why when you read these use cases like, oh, Google did this and Facebook did that and Spotify did this.
Speaker: That worked with those people at that time.
Speaker: And you can't just say, well, if I do the same thing, it's going to work here.
Speaker: Everybody's different.
Speaker: So as leaders, you have to sit there and you have to be mindful about what kind of personalities you have on hand.
Speaker: You know, are they producers?
Speaker: Are they innovators?
Speaker: Are you trying to find people that are specialists in deep knowledge, have deep knowledge on one particular topic?
Speaker: Are you trying to have a T-shaped team?
Speaker: Like it's just looking at such a big problem and it changes all the time.
Speaker: People quit, people get hired, people get fired.
Speaker: It's just constantly changing.
Speaker: And the requirements of running the business, ironically, there's less of them than there are tickets for software, but they're more complicated.
Speaker: Well, I mean, you clearly put a lot of thought into, you know, kind of the interpersonal aspects of leadership, of managing a team.
Speaker: How does that relate to your hiring process?
Speaker: Like, are you able to know in a given position the type person that you're going to need?
Speaker: And how do you try to interview for that?
Speaker: Yeah, so I think I've...
Speaker: I think over the last 20 years, I've been involved in well over a thousand interviews and candidates and everything like that across different places.
Speaker: And everybody has a different strategy.
Speaker: And that's the other weird part too, right?
Speaker: You'd think after all these decades, it'd be pretty straightforward on how to hire the right person, but, you know.
Speaker: many interviews you have, it's a first date.
Speaker: Everybody's dressed up.
Speaker: Everybody's got their best smile put on and everybody's giving a show.
Speaker: And then when you finally get hired and you go into a company, you fast forward to seven years in the marriage and, okay, what's really going on?
Speaker: So it just depends on what you're looking for, right?
Speaker: I mean, I absolutely love
Speaker: having a good recruiting system in place, whether if your company can afford it and has their own technical recruiters on hand and they're able to handle it, awesome.
Speaker: If not, you have to go to people like yourselves at OpenArc or wherever, because you want to focus on your core, right?
Speaker: Our core business is not hiring people.
Speaker: Our core business is delivering value to our customers, delivering solutions to, you know, improve mobility for humankind.
Speaker: My business is not recruiting people across the planet.
Speaker: So I want to invest my money on my core problems, not my context.
Speaker: So I'd much rather go out to people that specialize in that area and can vet and bring good results.
Speaker: And it's a great relationship too, because the pressure's on you.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And our interests.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And our interests are very much aligned.
Speaker: Like, you know, we define the people that are going to work out well, are going to be successful.
Speaker: And, you know, that's why we appreciate working with individuals like yourself, because, you know, when I describe you, I was like, look, Nick doesn't pull any punches.
Speaker: Nick is going to be very upfront and honest of who he's looking for.
Speaker: And, you know, quite honestly, if OpenArc falls short or if the individual falls short, he's going to let us know how and why.
Speaker: And that's hugely beneficial to us because, you know, I can't pretend that we're always going to be perfect, but we can also very much learn from our mistakes.
Speaker: and make sure we do a better job next time around.
Speaker: Is there anything, you know, in particular, and it doesn't have to be specifically about OpenArc, that, you know, recruiting firms, staffing firms that you've worked with over the years have done, you know, really well that you're looking for and or things that, you know, experiences that you have maybe have not been so positive that, you know, we could improve on or the industry could improve on in general?
Speaker: So the thing I love the most with any company that's helping out is when there's actual collaboration, right?
Speaker: And this is where it's different at every company, right?
Speaker: Some companies you have your internal HR people that want to funnel everything through them to keep track of, you know, what resumes are coming in and this and that.
Speaker: Sometimes you have places where the recruiters work directly with the managers.
Speaker: So it's, it's different, but as long as there's collaboration between yourself and the hiring manager, it's like, um,
Speaker: I can't think of what it's called.
Speaker: It's kind of like, you know, the definition.
Speaker: Synergy.
Speaker: That's not my favorite word, but.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Synergy.
Speaker: Synergy.
Speaker: It's not my favorite word.
Speaker: It's very much like a buzzword, but, you know, it sounds similar to what you're describing.
Speaker: We're going to synergize e-commerce.
Speaker: At the end of the day, the more information I can give you, the better the candidates will be coming back my way.
Speaker: So anybody that just sends a JD and says, hey, get me this person.
Speaker: Yeah, nine times out of 10, they're gonna be disappointed in what they get because if that's all you gave without having a context about, or if you don't have a conversation about the context and what they're actually gonna be doing, because you can only think through so much and put it into writing, there's nuances, right?
Speaker: So, you know, the data program I'm running is essentially a startup within a hundred year old company.
Speaker: So in the interview process, it had to be very straightforward with the leaders and the senior engineers and data engineers and like, Hey, we're starting from scratch.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So you're going to come in and be like, Hey, what do I do?
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: We're making this up.
Speaker: No, we have to get from here to there.
Speaker: And I made this plan up last weekend.
Speaker: So come on in, let's figure this out together.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, uh, at the end of the day, um,
Speaker: it's that conversation piece.
Speaker: You have to have that feedback mechanism.
Speaker: And the other thing too, in an ideal world, there's a couple of levels between the recruiters and the hiring manager.
Speaker: Like ideally you'd have some technical people on the inside that are able to vet the candidates because when you turn the switch on, I mean,
Speaker: Open are just like, here's 10, here's 20, here's 30.
Speaker: It's like, okay, wait, wait, I gotta read through these and see which ones I want to review, right?
Speaker: So I've been at places where they invested heavily on the recruiting teams and people would vet those and then pass it on.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: because you're not looking at everyone yourself, you don't know if there's any that they passed on that you would have spoken to or this and that.
Speaker: But if everybody trusts each other and everybody's doing their best that they can, then, you know, it saves a lot of time on the team that's, you know, writing code and everything like that because we're viewing resumes and doing phone screens takes time.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: But then again, that's...
Speaker: That's why you're a leader.
Speaker: It's your job to find the right talent.
Speaker: That trust is such a key component, right?
Speaker: And that trust comes from, of course, experience working together.
Speaker: But I think the foundation of that is effective communication.
Speaker: When you're speaking with Jordan, you need to trust that she understands that.
Speaker: you know, what you're describing and you articulated it really well earlier, but there, you know, there are two aspects to it.
Speaker: There is the technical fit or matching of the requirements, whatever those requirements need to be.
Speaker: And, you know, you even discussed a little bit, you know, you can transition in between certain technologies without too much difficulty if you have that kind of core, you know, understandings.
Speaker: about really what I really liked hearing from you was about how, even if this worked at one company,
Speaker: It worked at that one company because of the people in place at that company.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's about the personality aspects, who that person is, you know, the person that is going to function in, you know, what you describe right now, that startup environment.
Speaker: You know, yeah, you can find someone with the technology, but they might not want to be in an ambiguous environment working on something that was just thought up over the weekend.
Speaker: And if we know that,
Speaker: then we're going to be able to have very honest conversations with the individuals that we're talking to and say, hey, it's, you know, you're not going to know what you're doing day to day.
Speaker: Things are going to change because, you know, Nick might determine something else over next weekend and you're going to need to figure it out.
Speaker: So you need to be flexible and be able to work with that.
Speaker: And if you can and you like that and that's interesting,
Speaker: that's going to be a match.
Speaker: And if you can't, it's not.
Speaker: And again, to your point, that's why it comes down to that trust and communication that you effectively communicated that to us.
Speaker: So we're not wasting the time that you're putting in place, having conversations with people, even if they're a perfect fit on a resume, are not interested in the environment that they're going to be working in.
Speaker: There's another book I'll quote for you.
Speaker: It's one of my favorite things is they have this saying, you know, when you're going through your accountability chart, you know, what are the roles and responsibilities before you even put names and faces on those boxes?
Speaker: What do you need to run your organization?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then it says, once you start putting people in those boxes, it's GWC.
Speaker: Does that person get it?
Speaker: Do they want it?
Speaker: Do they have the capacity to do it?
Speaker: And if it's not three yeses, it's not the right person.
Speaker: And what you said was so spot on being receptive to change.
Speaker: I mean, it can be a grind though, right?
Speaker: If what you're working on gets changed every day and there's no direction, that's a grind.
Speaker: It's very frustrating to not have direction.
Speaker: But, you know, any new college grads out there that think you're going to come in and just do the same thing nine to five every day, you're wrong.
Speaker: It's just...
Speaker: There's no such thing in software development or operations or anything like that.
Speaker: You do your best to make sure all work is visible and planned out and capacities there, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: There's always an emergency.
Speaker: There's always unplanned work.
Speaker: And, you know, it's a productivity killer.
Speaker: But I, you know, over 20 years, I've never seen anybody not have that problem.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And even if the day-to-day isn't going to change, to your point for any recent college graduate coming out, the technology is always going to.
Speaker: The technology you were learning when you got your computer on fire is very different in, I think, probably every aspect to what you're working on today and the technology is out there.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: Everybody's got a different personality, right?
Speaker: So you want to do your best, not to just hire people who you think you would be friends with.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, because you know, you have to make sure you're getting the right skill sets and all that stuff.
Speaker: But as a leader, you know, whether, whether you're a first level engineering manager or, you know, an EVP or something,
Speaker: you have to make sure that the personality is going to fit in with the team, right?
Speaker: Just like I was saying before, what works for Google was those people, right?
Speaker: So based on your formula for success and your strategy, make sure you're bringing in the people that you think are going to buy into that vision and help make it happen, right?
Speaker: You obviously have to vet everybody.
Speaker: So if you're hiring for a backend engineer, frontend engineer, yeah,
Speaker: Have your seniors and principals and juniors interview them and say, yeah, yeah, and a on the technical skill sets, right?
Speaker: Because you have to decide if you want to bring somebody in and train them up because they're missing a skill set, but they have the attitude and the aptitude, or if you're bringing somebody in that already has the skills because you don't have the time to wait around and teach them angular or something.
Speaker: So based on your needs, go after what you got to get.
Speaker: And if you can find the unicorn that's got all the skills and wants to learn and has the right attitude, snatch them up.
Speaker: And in this day and age, do not wait on giving feedback and scheduling that first phone call.
Speaker: It's really hooking the fish because if you wait more than a week or two, they're gone.
Speaker: Fantastic advice.
Speaker: Since the major changes in the market that we have experienced over the past couple of years, it has absolutely accelerated things from a hiring perspective.
Speaker: And you're probably speaking from experience that if you really like somebody and you do not move quickly, there's every possibility someone else hooks that fish before you're able to land them.
Speaker: Yeah, you gotta, you gotta take the chance.
Speaker: Um, trust your gut, but you know, my approach is a little weird.
Speaker: When I, when I interview people, I have that attendance, a conversation like this, um, I just want people to know what they're getting into and they're going to come work for me.
Speaker: And like you said earlier, I, I don't pull my punches and I am honest to a fault.
Speaker: Uh, I swear too much too, but, um,
Speaker: And I'm guilty of all of those things.
Speaker: And yeah, I was actually gonna say, you know, from our experience and then certainly from this conversation, I think one of the things that you do really well in order to get to kind of the core true understanding of people is because you're so straightforward,
Speaker: because you're honestly genuinely communicating that you kind of have people let their guard down for both good or ill, honestly, on their end, they might make you aware of something that is going to give you an indication that that might not work.
Speaker: Or when you make the decision to bring someone on, you can believe it's more genuine because you are able to put them more in a relaxed mood.
Speaker: And what's nice about being honest and upfront as well is
Speaker: You know, I don't think it's very common for you at all to have experienced, you know, when people come on board for them to then say to you, well, this is different than you described.
Speaker: You describe it very much warts and all.
Speaker: So they can't be surprised when they see what's going on.
Speaker: Even if somebody is surprised, you know.
Speaker: At least you feel like you did your due diligence.
Speaker: It'd be one thing if it was their first day on the job out of school.
Speaker: Anybody that's worked in a company before in IT, come on.
Speaker: I told you everything the best I can, but you think you're going to learn everything that's possibly wrong with a place in, what, three, four, five hours of conversations?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You can only fit so much in.
Speaker: So my advice to anybody looking for a job is,
Speaker: You got nobody to blame but yourself.
Speaker: If you don't have the answers to a question that because you didn't ask it, that's on you.
Speaker: You know, I have an entire, you know, I have an entire workbook I put together over the years.
Speaker: Anytime I'm interviewing for a company, you know, I do the diligence on them.
Speaker: I have all my questions ready.
Speaker: If they're a startup, I'm going to ask these questions.
Speaker: If they're established, I have these questions.
Speaker: I don't go anywhere without talking to everybody I'm going to work with because what good is it if I show up on the job and, you know,
Speaker: one of my peers or my boss ends up being a total jerk.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Ruh-roh.
Speaker: So, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, that's phenomenal advice is, you know, and the way I tend to phrase it over the years is, you know, ask all the questions that, you know, that you need to know in order to make a decision if this opportunity is right for you.
Speaker: Because when an offer is on the table, that offer is going to be on the table, whether or not you have all those questions answered.
Speaker: And, you know, on our end, of course, we'll always try to follow up and gain those.
Speaker: But there's no substitute to talking to the direct person that you're going to be working for and getting, in your case specifically, a very straightforward answer.
Speaker: My other piece of advice while we're advising candidates is don't BS your way through questions.
Speaker: So it is much better to simply answer, I don't know, than to try to pretend to someone like yourself that you understand something that you do not because you're going to have no problem sniffing that out and you're not going to want to hire somebody that is going to be doing that to you on the day-to-day.
Speaker: You would much rather them tell you they don't know and ask for mentorship.
Speaker: I will say, I...
Speaker: I figured I was onto something with the way I was interviewing people because when I would ask questions like that, if I picked up on something that somebody didn't know, I would take the time and explain it to them right then and there and why I was even asking the question and this and that.
Speaker: And then the next thing, you know,
Speaker: people that I didn't even hire started asking me on LinkedIn if I would talk to them more and recommend things for them to read and stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Maybe next time you'll have what you need, you know?
Speaker: And I thought that was really cool because, you know, one of the best questions I've ever heard somebody ask at the end of the interview is,
Speaker: While you're making up your mind, is there anything you think I should be studying and researching regardless of the outcome of this process?
Speaker: Because I really value your opinion on the direction I'm taking in my career.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, you know, that's really something to think about.
Speaker: you know how would you answer that if a candidate asks you what they should be you know what are their weaknesses that you want them to focus on regardless of hiring them what do you say yeah you know that's that's a good indication you know at a minimum that someone's coachable that they they they want to learn um you know if you use the cliche like
Speaker: Someone who knows everything already, whether they do or not, is going to be, you know, they better be correct because they're going to be a challenge to mentor, to get it to do it the way you might want it done if somebody always knows better.
Speaker: But as a leader, your job is not to tell them what to do or your job is not to tell them how to do it.
Speaker: you're going to trust them to make up their own mind and give you the best results.
Speaker: And if you're not getting the results, you train them, you talk to them, you work with them, you mold them.
Speaker: But, you know, there's two kinds of leaders out there, right?
Speaker: When things go wrong, you got people that hop in and do it because they know how to do it better.
Speaker: And you got people that trust their team.
Speaker: And if the problem is the team itself, they fix that problem.
Speaker: And I'm very much the latter.
Speaker: Were you always that way?
Speaker: For me, I definitely had to go through a transition to not just hop in and do, because I came from an individual kind of contributor set of circumstances.
Speaker: So it took some time for me to be like, no, okay, you go ahead.
Speaker: Here's my advice.
Speaker: Let's try it again.
Speaker: Let's get you there.
Speaker: That was a struggle for me personally.
Speaker: Ironically, I did not have that problem.
Speaker: my mother, my aunts, my cousins are all elementary teachers.
Speaker: And I just, I grew up around people, especially my mother would sit there and not play dumb, but ask questions like, really, what do you think about this?
Speaker: You know, because they're trying to get you to think it through yourself.
Speaker: So I just kind of naturally picked up on it where I might know how I would do it, but for whatever reason, it just,
Speaker: you know, flows out of my mouth like, oh, you could do this.
Speaker: Did you think about that?
Speaker: It might work, it might not work.
Speaker: I was just curious if you thought about it.
Speaker: And when you ask people to do something,
Speaker: they respond 10 times better than if you tell them to just do it, right?
Speaker: So if you always say like, hey, could you do me a favor?
Speaker: I know we're having a problem over here.
Speaker: Has anybody looked into this solution?
Speaker: I saw this, and you can play it down.
Speaker: I saw this on an article last night, you know, may or may not be worth looking into, but you get that little seed growing in their thought process.
Speaker: And if you're right, great.
Speaker: If you're wrong, great.
Speaker: Because either way, do something.
Speaker: It's better than nothing.
Speaker: That's the other problem that leaders have too.
Speaker: Every process is they overanalyze everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At some point you can't sit there and say, well, I like these 15 candidates.
Speaker: No, you have to pick.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Indecision is worse than making the wrong decision.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, I mean, even 15, like that's a ton.
Speaker: You're going to, that's a lot of candidates.
Speaker: To interview, that's a lot of candidates to go through a process with.
Speaker: And to your point, number one or two candidates that you interviewed might have been the best for it.
Speaker: But by the time you get through all 15, the likelihood of them being available.
Speaker: Well, hey, I really appreciate your time.
Speaker: I've really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker: I want to be cognizant of your time because I know we're running up.
Speaker: Is there, you know, kind of any other piece of advice that you'd offer for, you know, any of the audiences that we've discussed today?
Speaker: Candidates, hiring managers, staffing firms like OpenArk, you know, any kind of key thing you would want to, you know, if you could put your Nick spin out into the market writ large, what would it be?
Speaker: So,
Speaker: pull a Michael Scott and quote somebody else.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: So whether, whether I'm talking to, um, you know, a global council executives or a college student, or even my hairstylist, you get what you expect and you deserve what you tolerate.
Speaker: It's that simple.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: All right, Nick.
Speaker: Well, again, thank you so much for your time here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was just the outro.
Speaker: Goodbye.
Speaker: Oh, that cough was in there.
Speaker: We're still.
