Indeed – Advice On How Grads Can Avoid Burnout + Incorporate Atypical Experiences During Job Hunt With Paul Wolfe

William 0:35
Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup and you’re listening to the RecruitingDaily podcast. Today we have Paul Wolfe on from Indeed, and we have a wonderful topic to explore. It’s how new grads can maintain mental health during the job search, which can be uber stressful and laden with anxiety. So Paul’s a wonderful person to talk to just in general, but that we’ve got a great topic that we’re going to explore. So Paul, do me a favor and do the audience a favor and introduce yourself and for anyone that’s lived under a rock for a decade, Indeed, in general, and then we’ll jump into the topic.

Paul 1:14
So totally so great to be chatting with you, William. I’m Paul Wolfe. I’m the Senior Vice President of HR for Indeed, to William’s point, for those that have been living under a rock for the last 15 or 16 years. Indeed’s, the number one job site in the world.

We get over 250 million job seekers a month looking for in millions of jobs. We’re available in 60 countries in 28 languages. People can search for jobs, post resumes, research companies look for salary information on Indeed. And if you haven’t given it a try, you should give it a try to find your next job.

William 1:45
And so, so the fact that you and I are talking about mental health is, first of all, it’s a testament that we’re here now. As opposed to, you know, maybe it was taboo, just just a few years ago, pre-COVID it was taboo to even talk about mental health. So the fact that we’re talking about mental health, I think is, it’s unfortunate that we had to have a pandemic to get us to this place. But we’re here now.

So I appreciate that we’re here, and that we can actually talk with new grads about this that, you know, it’s it’s okay. So let’s talk a little bit about the job market for new grads that they’re entering into. So what, what are you seeing right now from your vista? And again, you have a wonderful vista to be able to look across all of your clients and, and the industry, really. And you also do a ton of hiring for Indeed, as well. So you know, you’ve got that as well. So what are you seeing from this new, you know, the folks that are kind of entry-level and fresh grads? What are you seeing from them?

Paul 2:49
Yeah, I think it’s — Yeah, your point about the mental health conversation being taboo, and now it’s been normalized. Unfortunately, it took a pandemic to do that. I think it’s amazing. Like, we should have been talking about this all along, because we’re all humans at the end of the day, and we’ve got, you know, crap that we deal with other than work and we’ve got stuff at work going on. So I kind of second and third kind of your statement. The market is more interesting now.

So if you dial back 12 months, like the new, you know, any grad coming out, or trying to get an internship, that was a whole different world. We were at the beginning of the pandemic, or kind of three months into it hitting the US. And it was tough. You know, the hiring has picked up, hiring is picked up across most industries. And now we’re even starting to see, I was, I live in New York. And I happened to be in Manhattan last week, for the first time. I don’t know in eight or nine months, other than like, doctor’s appointments occasionally. And my husband and I were down there, went to dinner, we had cocktails, we were out. And there is an energy back to the city.

I think we’re seeing that energy back in the job market as well, not just in big cities, but across the board for the most part. And you’re starting to see that, I mean that the industry that was hardest hit and has been hardest hit by this for the longest time is hospitality. Bars, restaurants, certainly the cruise industry, the airlines early on, but that, you know, we’re starting to see airline travel pick back up now that vaccination rates in the US are going up. And so we’re starting to see you know, hiring pickup across the board, which is good.

To me it’ll be really interesting, especially in bigger cities, how small and midsize businesses come back and probably more of a smaller kind of family on mom and pop businesses but we’re starting to see a resurgence across the board, which is great. I think your point about the job search is stressful no matter who you are. I think the pandemic has made it more stressful and certainly if I just graduated or I’m just graduating you know with a great now looking for a job is still a stressful event and people’ve got to be able to manage that and kind of you know, understand best how to navigate that, absolutely, we can distill some insights for them today.

William 5:03
Well, I love that. And your Indeed is always on the cutting edge of, of innovation when it comes to both giving advice to your clients, but also doing things internally. I remember early on in pandemic, you know, talking with you and, and y’all deciding to go virtual. Very, I mean, I would say very early on, but you know, compared to others very early on, you just you made the decision like, No, okay, here’s the deal.

We have a wonderful headquarters, a beautiful headquarters in Austin, Texas. And you know, what, you need to stay home. And if you want to come great, but you know what, let’s just let’s see how this all plays out. You’re very early on, in kind of setting the tone for with a lot of folks in our industry. So A, I appreciate that. But, you know, right now, how do you feel like Indeed is supporting, you know, new grads? You know, is it because, again, it is different, you know, work from home is different. Remote is different. The job search is different, you know, some of these folks didn’t, weren’t on campus their entire last year of college, you know, so just like graduating is different. So how are y’all? How are you finding it? And how are you finding supporting them?

Paul 6:22
Yeah, it’s, different is a good word. I used that in a LinkedIn post a couple of days ago, about the last 15 months. And you can interpret that however you want to. But so from a support perspective, and I think we’ve done a good job of certainly supporting our employees, I appreciate the shout-out because we did go to work from home at the beginning of March last year.

And we’re still, like our only office open right now is Sydney and you know, Australia is an island, it’s done a really effective job of managing the pandemic and their numbers have been very low for a long time. And we’re just starting to talk about opening one of our five offices in Austin. Yeah, to let people that want to come back, come back. But for jobs for new college grads, and new job seekers, specifically, twice a month, we release what we call job jobcasts, which basically are virtual workshops with helpful tips, advice on how to navigate the world of work and kind of searching for jobs.

And we’ve done a few that are geared specifically towards students and new grads and soon-to-be grads. You know, just kind of dealing with the unexpected disruptions, the unexpectedness of the last 15 or 16 months that they’ve been trying to do. My guess is some of them, you know, wanted to intern internships or sign up for internships, when all of this started, and that went away, a lot of companies pulled back last summer on internships, and some did it virtually.

We’ve also covered the impact of COVID on recent grads, guidance for new and soon-to-be grads that are entering the workforce for the first time and just giving them ideas on how to look at their search. How to use virtual networking, you know, networking has always been the thing. It’s who do I know, that might know somebody that knows somebody at this company, you know, and that used to all be done in person, you and I, you know, networked and saw each other a lot of times at Indeed Interactive, our big client conference, and now we’re doing stuff, we’ve done a couple things virtually, we’ve all just pivoted to virtual.

So I think that’s the, the beauty of it is we’ve, luckily, with this pandemic, we have the technology that has allowed us to stay as well connected as we have. Because like, I still, I’m an introvert, I still miss human interaction other than my husband, I adore my husband. But you know, we’ve been together for 16 months in the same house. But just the random, like the randomness of me being in one of our offices, wherever I was traveling, and just bumping into an employee and having the hallway conversation, the water cooler conversation. I’ve missed that part of it. I think some of that is starting to come back.

But I think virtual is here to stay, you know, to your point, looking as is similar, I think the market again, is starting to kind of come back to full steam. Interviewing is certainly different than it was, you know, three, four or five years ago, because now it’s, you know, for the most part, it’s virtual. I hope, honestly that that’s one of the things that’s here to stay in the mix. Because the one thing we’ve seen from a client perspective is with virtual interviewing, scheduling is easier.

I don’t have to get on a plane and fly someplace to meet people. I can bang through three or four in you know, two or three hours. I don’t I don’t even have to get in my car to drive anyplace. So that is cutting down the time that a search takes. And we’re also seeing in some cases, clients making decisions more quickly and I think because they can go through more candidates in a shorter amount of time, but they’re able to make decisions more quickly.

You know, in some cases we’ve seen like an eight-week search get cut down to four or five weeks. Which is great all-around certainly great for the company, getting somebody in a seat sooner and certainly for somebody’s looking for a job, especially if they don’t have a job. And they’re, you know, that that check and earning money is important to them. And so that’s, you know, virtual, I think is a figuring out how to integrate that with some in person, because I do think the mix is good and the next normal. But continuing to focus on using technology to shorten the timeframe to hire and find a job, I think is, you know, kind of, to me utopia, at least for the next few years.

William 10:24
But it just should, because December of 19, or January of 20, the candidates were faster than most recruiting teams. Not all, but but by and large, by the time we would go through all of our process, and get back to the candidate that we really love, they’d already made, they’d already accepted a job somewhere else, right. And, and so whatever, you know, then Now, of course, we went to the pandemic are still technically going through the pandemic, but it still felt like the candidates were faster. And now hopefully we can, we can find ways to squeeze out some of that inefficiency in our processes so that we can at least get be as fast as candidates.

We might not ever be faster than candidates. But if we can be as at least as fast as they are, yeah, we can equalize both sides of our process here. Yeah. So. So advice for new grads. And and again, getting back to the topic of you know, dealing with mental health, the job search new grads, kind of the the triangle of those three. What’s your best advice for them in terms of managing their stress, because looking for a job, I mean, it’s probably been 100 years since you’ve looked for a job, Paul, but however, at one point, at one point, I and you looked for jobs, and it was stressful. And you know, we all have family members and friends and all that stuff. They go through this as well. So what’s your best advice for folks?

Paul 11:49
Yeah, I think it’s similar advice I’ve given to job seekers all along. And I think it’s so it still holds true. And I still follow, even though I’m not looking for a job, I still follow some of these things, too. I think keeping a schedule, like staying on a schedule is really important. So if you, you know, if you just graduated last month, or graduating now, you know, you had an if it was your last year in college, you probably have an easier schedule than others.

But if you think about Monday through Friday, you know, nine to five is my job search time, you know, and break up those days with you know, I’m not necessarily a morning person, so I wouldn’t schedule interviews in the morning. I would take my morning, let me do some research. Let me figure out, you know, what companies are interesting. Let me look at their social media. Is this the right place for me? What’s their mission? I would do my research in the morning.

I’d also make sure that I’d break. Like make sure I put breaks in my in this in the schedule and his calendar, if you will, and I do that just in my job today. I will be transparent with you and William, you and I are always transparent to each other. I took a 30-minute nap 45 minutes ago. And I find like if I scheduled 45 minutes for lunch, if I can eat quick and take a 30 minute nap.

I’m older than everybody graduating school much older than everyone graduating school right now, that 30 minute nap helps me get through the afternoon. And it’s a break. The other thing we’ve done religiously, our dogs, we have three dogs, they’re extraordinarily spoiled, they were spoiled before the pandemic, and they are more spoiled now because we are here to serve them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But we always try if the weather if it’s not, you know, here in New York, snowing or raining or crappy luckily our weather’s been good the last few weeks, take 15 or 20 minutes out in the afternoon and go play with them in the backyard, take a little bit of a hike around you know the lake that we live on or something.

And I think building these self care breaks as I call them mental health breaks, whatever you want to call them, and do whatever like makes you feel good. If you’ve picked up a hobby, a lot of people have done that. If you are a runner, you’re a biker, like make some time to do that. The job search is you got to think about yourself as a you know holistically as a human being. And it’s interesting, I’ve had this revelation over the last 15 months, it probably sounds crazy coming out of an HR leaders mouth. But I think I got so used to my job. And I would think about our 10,000 employees as employees.

I think because we’ve all zoomed in to everybody’s homes for the last 15 or 16 months and you get a different glimpse of them as a person. You, even art on the wall, you see a dog pop up you see, you know, we’ve had kids pop up in zoom, and it’s great. Moms and dads, I met a grandfather a couple months ago for one of our HR coordinators, um, I think it puts it reaffirms to me that all humans first and secondarily they’re all employees of Indeed. And that’s the connectivity between all of us. That’s we’re all here for the same reason to help people get jobs. And so I think it is you got to think about your job search in the same way you’re a human being trying to find a job that’s going to be interesting and challenging for you, at least if it’s your, if your first one out of school, something that’s going to open a door and be in an industry that you probably are interested in based on the research you’ve done.

And so, you know, like I said, my, my day would be research in the morning, I’d make sure I have a break, I grab some lunch. And then I probably schedule my interviews for early afternoon, if that’s what works. Certainly, you’ve got to be, you know, mindful of when, when it works for the company, or the hiring manager, whoever you’re interviewing with, you have to make exceptions to that. And do those and be prepared for those. Don’t have distractions, you know, you’re doing it virtually now, you got to make eye contact with the camera, you’ve got to play to the camera, that is the person that you’re talking to. I think eye contact and body language is still really important, because people can still see that. And I think to some extent you’ve got to, your energy has to come across cross even a bit more as you’re on camera. I find even when I do interviews, I try and not be over the top, but certainly be more engaged and play to the camera.

And do my interviews, make sure you know if you’ve if there are other folks in the house, if you’ve got roommates, luckily, if you’ve got a door that you can close in a room, put a note on the door, you know, doing interviews, if you’re not in a place where you’ve got private space, let whoever else post house know with you that you know, try and keep it down and doing interviews over here I’d use in that case, I’d use earbuds or air pods, just so you can make sure you’re hearing picking up everything that they’re saying, and they can hear you really well. And then for me like the tail end of the day, as I start to my energy starts to wane out, I would do some follow-up.

You know, I interviewed three or four days ago with this company, I set my you know, thank you email, I’m just going to check in and see, you know, do they need any more information, figure out where they are in their process, see if I can get an update. But I think having a schedule is really, really important and building in breaks so that you are not just, I’m going to I’m going to power through and run through the brick wall until I find a job because you’re going to burn yourself out just like work. If you if you go too long before you take a break before you take a day of PTO. Or you know, a week off or whatever you need, you’re going to burn yourself out and you’re going to get discouraged. And that’s not good for you. It’s certainly not good for your mental health.

And I think the final piece of advice is you probably two pieces. Patience. Patience is a virtue. We’ve heard that I’ve heard that all my life. But it truly is here, I’m a firm believer in timing, the right thing will come along for you, you may have to wait a little bit, you want to, you also want to make sure it’s right. You don’t want to get into a situation where you just take the first thing that comes along, unless you’re in a situation where you have to and I respect that that’s the case. But if you if you’ve got some time, really do your research and make sure the company is right for you, and find out about the manager that you’d be working for and ask questions on that. And then, you know, don’t get discouraged. And that’s hard. But, you know, keep your goal focused.

Even if you want to create a vision board, like I find I’m a visual learner, and a visual person. So me seeing something and then you know, there’s a vision board with you know, I’ve got these five companies I really want to work for. Here are the names of the roles, whatever the case may be, or your ultimate goal is, you know, I want to buy a house in five years, I want to get a job now and start socking away money, whatever the case may be, like, I think whatever you can do to put yourself in the right frame of mind. And keep to a schedule with breaks really helps the job search process, it helps I find reduce stress. And it does keep your you know, I think it creates a more balanced human being, if you will.

William 18:34
It’s interesting, because you touched on two things that I think that I’d give advice to people around is, you know, the job search and balancing out your mental health is a game of rejection management. That you understand that you’re probably going to look at more jobs or even think that more jobs are great for you, then they’re gonna think that are great, you know, for you on the other side. And so you’re gonna get rejected. And so just kind of coming to grips with that. And understanding that, you know, it’s, it’s okay, A. B, it’s just a part of, you know, the job search.

Not everyone knew they applied to the first job and they get hired, like that’s, that’s a fairy tale. I mean, it does happen to some people. But though those are statistical outliers, most people get rejected. And so understanding and being able to manage that, and I love the way that you woven fit. Because that’s the ultimate game for both sides, both the recruiters, hiring managers, the sourcers, the candidates, they’re all trying to find the right fit. And that fit can be both skills and potential reality because somebody can just be timing. You might be the right person with the right experience and all that stuff, but it’s just the wrong time. They’re going through some organizational change or the hiring manager has moved on and done something different.

And it’s just not the right time, and had nothing to do with you as a candidate. And so you got to kind of understand that, you know, there’s some things that you can control a whole lot of that you can’t, boy, you can’t control is how you consume that. And, and how you manage that how you manage your mental health through that. Let me ask you about non traditional experiences. So this is, you know, again, through the pandemic, people have had to get really creative, and I know people worried about gaps, and you brought up internships early on, and you know, people probably during their sophomores, you know, junior year that have done an internship or two, yeah, during a pandemic, all that stuff’s either not done or done remotely.

And so that’s okay. Those are, again, those are experiences, but they’re kind of now, non-traditional. So what’s the advice on for candidates to help them with their, you know, telling that story, because some of this stuff, it’s really easy to look at a LinkedIn profile or resume and go through all of that stuff and application. And some of it’s their ability to tell a story about what they’ve learned and what they’d like to learn.

Paul 21:13
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I think that I like the word story, because that’s, you know, you know this, I’m not a huge fan of resumes, and also not a huge fan of job descriptions, um, but I like somebody to tell me a story about who they are, what they’ve done, and what they’re looking to do. And so in this case, with non traditional experience, so if you were in a, you know, club organization in school, and you were the treasurer, you were the president, you ran a project, like those all are roles that you have, that have skills that are transferable to a vast majority of jobs, more than likely that you’re going to be applying for, yeah, certainly, if you’re the treasurer, you’ve got budgeting experience, your organize your attention, you’ve got an attention to detail, think about a vast majority of job descriptions, those three bullets are probably in a decent chunk of any job description that you read today.

So think about the things that you’ve done. Also volunteer, if you’ve been in a volunteer organization, you know, Even if you didn’t have a leadership role, certainly have a leadership role, the same types of things, those are jobs, you don’t get paid for them in from a financial perspective, you get paid for them and giving back to the community or giving back to the organization that’s important to you. And sometimes that’s greater than, than the financial reward. But those are, those all have transferable skills. And I think you can talk to those in a resume, you can certainly talk to those in a first meeting with a recruiter, if you get to the point where they’re doing a phone screen, make sure that you bring those up.

There’s nothing too small, if you think that there’s application, Even if you think about it, and one of the things we’ve done some research in the last year or so. And we’ve seen a lot, there’s a lot of other research outside of Indeed about how the pandemic has impacted certain underrepresented minority groups, and certainly women differently or in a greater way than men. And I think one of the pieces of research we did like in the US 3 million women left the workforce during the pandemic, because they were in cases of primary caregiver, you know, kids daycare was closed, school was closed for a variety of reasons. Or they are caregiver to one of their parents who may have been God forbid, sick, or whatever the case may be. I’m running, you know, if your mom and you’ve been at home for the last few years running a household, you know, if you think about kids have activities, you know, this you have you have a son, you know, or I think actually two sons, I apologize.

They’ve got activities, you’ve got to be on top of it attention to detail, coordination, calendaring, budgeting, that’s all part of it. And I think there is, you know, this goes back to my comment about we’re all human beings. Work is work is work, it’s, it’s a word that we have tied to going someplace and doing something for money for, you know, ever, like, that’s how I, you know, my mom did that my grandfather, that’s how we all thought about it. But to me, if you take a step back and you think about us all as human beings on this big blue marble, whether it is taking care of a loved one, whether it’s raising children, whether it’s you know, working, whether it’s you know, being a, you know, a having a leadership role in a club, in school, or being in a volunteer organization.

All of those things are work, work doesn’t have to equate to something you will find that you reap financial rewards for. You’re doing something and there are skills that are attributed with all of those various roles. And they’re all applicable to any of these jobs that people are going to be talking to employers about. And I think I, you know, my, if any recruiters and hiring managers are listening to this podcast, you need to think about people in this way, not just about what companies they’ve worked for. And for the new grads, put it all on there and tell your story about who you are, what you’ve done, what you bring to the table, what you add to the party. I like to say that a lot, because it’s not about the person fitting in, it’s about what do they bring to the table? What are they going to contribute? Um, and why this role is the right role for you.

I think that’s, you know, in a resume, in a cover letter in your first phone screen, have that? You know, is it the two or three minute like, we start with a 30-second elevator pitch, maybe this is a two or three minute story about Paul, about William about whomever, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, and what you want to do, and why you think you know why you think you’re right for this role, and be able to nail that to simply any place you can use data or facts, I think, is really good. You know, companies and hiring managers react well to that. But I think that’s how these non-traditional experiences, things outside of working to get paid play into who you are and what you bring to the table.

William 26:03
Yeah, I think I mean, there’s a couple of things. One thing is like, I still for for new grads, or for early career folks. Those stories that you that you’ve accumulated, they carry with you. I mean, 30 years ago, as an editor of a journal for three years of my life. And I can tell you that I use the skills of being an editor of a journal, I still I use those skills every day. So so like those, those stories, those volunteer stories, all the things that Paul mentioned, they’re not just for that first job, or the second job. They can carry with, and should be a part of your story or overall story for life.

Secondly, I love the advice to hiring managers and recruiters is to not just look at where they’ve worked or the experiences that they’ve stated, it’s, it’s Even asking the question like, Well, you know, let’s talk a little bit about non-traditional experiences. Like, yeah, what else? What else is not stated that maybe you haven’t told me about that, that you’ve learned from that you can bring to the table I love, like, tease that out of folks. Again, I think that’s a great thing for recruiters and hiring managers, not to just to be a recipient of that stuff, but also be a participant and asking those questions.

Let me just really quickly, I’ve got just a couple things. One is just tips for not feeling discouraged, because you’ll give a lot of great advice. By the way, the Indeed blog is fantastic for both the hiring community but also for candidates. Because they operate on both sides and help people on both sides. So if you’re not following that blog, do, because they are always giving great advice do great research, but just Paul, tips that you know, you have that you personally give for two people for just, you know, you’ve been looking for a job for three months. It’s not easy, you get discouraged, maybe even a little depressed, heady. How do you kind of get out of that? Or how do you what’s the best way to manage that?

Paul 28:05
Yeah, I think it’s, it’s tough. I think the first thing is, you know, being realistic and knowing that the first job you get offered may not be your dream job. And you may want to continue, you may want to continue to look for that. But during that process, you know, you are there are volunteer opportunities that could help you on that path or build some skills that you don’t have, are there, you know, there’s plenty of gig and freelance work out there.

You know that the whole gig economy is a very interesting part of this process. And it may be that you take a gig or two or three while you’re looking for the job, and you’re building skills, and you’re continuing to build experience. And that’s going to help you ultimately land kind of what your first, you know, dream job is and so be open to different ways of thinking about work. Like I said before, it also may be that, you know, what, I want to work for company x, and you’re, you’re hell bent on that. And you know that the job you want isn’t there now, but there’s another job that’s similar, like be open to that.

Yeah, it’s not always not a straight line from point A, I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line or whatever that saying is, you may take more of a, you know, kind of roaming path to get where you want and that’s okay, as well. Now, don’t get so hung up on what past generations prescribed as this is what you need to do. Like this is your life, live it and own it. I think the other thing is, you know, Lafawn, who’s our GDP of environmental, social and governance and started out running our DI&B work for us. Always. I feel the same from her as have a squad, you know, have a support network.

It could be your parents. It could be other college, recent college grads that are in the same bucket as you compare notes, you know, commiserate with them vent to them. I think having sounding boards and people that you can kind of blow off some steam is good. It could be you know, college professors that you can ask you know, you want To give you honest advice, and maybe you want them to instill some realism and reality into you, you know, sometimes we get, we think we might be, you know, better or bigger than we are. And that’s not to deflate anybody. But I think it’s always good to keep that in check as well.

So I think build that squad and have that network that you can talk to, they can help, you know, Even if it’s grabbing a beer with somebody just to let some steam off. I think that is a way to not get discouraged or to deal with it and put it in perspective, and then get back, I think the important thing is to get back on the horse. So if you get discouraged, you know, if you’re for example, if you’re three months in and, okay, I just got turned down by this company, this company, this company. Don’t, you know, I think it’s fine to take a day. And if you’re on a hike, or go hike, if you’re a swimmer, runner, whatever, go to the gym, you know, more than once, and like, you know, kind of, you know, work it all out.

But don’t then, you know, don’t, don’t go into a week of I’m not going to do anything. Because I think then you get into the mode of you know, yeah, you start to feel sorry for yourself, you shame spiral, right. And so just, you know, take a break when you need to, it’s completely fine to do that. But then quickly get back on the horse and jump back into the game and keep going after what you want to do.

William 31:17
I love that. The last thing is just two-pronged, and I want to just get your take on curiosities that you’re seeing from early-stage people, and candidates related to a hybrid work, place or workforce and really work from home or remote. What what do you what are you seeing from early stage, folks? Are they asking questions about hybrid? Are they asking questions about work from home or remote? And if so, you know, how do we commute? How do we as employers, how do we Even if we don’t know, how do we render that? And if it is a curiosity, how do we answer it?

Paul 31:57
Yeah, I think it’s, you know, the questions are out there. Certainly, candidates are smarter than we are, we’ve heard , you know, luckily, those of us in the tech space we have the luxury of for Indeed, we have the luxury of telling 10,000 people to go work from home last March 3, and we’re still all doing that today. And we’ve been able to hit our KPIs and stay engaged. It’s a, you know, this is different.

This is not true work from home. If you think about the last 15 months, you know, just in the US. We’ve had social injustice, we’ve had economic uncertainty, we’ve certainly had a pandemic. And we’ve had a contentious to use a nice word presidential election going on while we’ve been at home trying to get work done like

William 32:38
And murder hornets. You forgot murder hornets.

Paul 32:41
And like cicadas. And now cicadas are coming out. And luckily, I’m in New York now. I used to live in Ohio, and the cicadas freaked me out. And so yes, and you can add any other like crazy thing that’s going on in the last however long. Um, you know, that’s not work from home. But we’re getting the question from candidates, we add, Indeed, probably last October, categorize all our jobs into any one multiple of three categories, you know, in office only, which is smaller, less than 1% of our jobs require the person to be in office to effectively do the job.

We’re calling it flex, which is hybrid, a mix of in-office and work from home and then purely remote. And we’ve done some surveying with our employee base, I would I would think that the candidate base is similar. I think, you know, what we see, as far as I think most of our people are going to most of our employees are going to want flex a mix of the two. And I think we may see some people take remote early on and then realize some of their team is coming in on right.

And if they happen to be in a location where we have an office. Yeah, I think that social interaction is so important. So they may change that. I think the one really interesting thing for anyone hiring today is if you are open to the flexibility, which I think we all should be where we can be from, I certainly get that there are some industries that Can’t where we can be it vastly opens up the talent pool. I don’t have to just hire people in Austin anymore, or Yale, or Stanford or, you know, Scottsdale, Seattle, San Francisco, or, you know, I think about our five US offices, I can hire engineers in Atlanta, I can hire engineers in Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Those are three really interesting markets for engineering talent to me that we’re starting to explore. I can hire somebody in Boise, Idaho who you know, might write content for us because that job can be remote and they can effectively get that job done. And so it really opens up the talent pool it also opens up I think, or you know, large mix larger I can’t even think of the right word. It just the diversity within that talent pool because you’re not looking at specific markets anymore. You know, in that’s how we’re approaching the US outside the US it’s, you know, countries you can work in countries where we have an entity because we get into tax and, and benefits and other you know, immigration issues and right to work issues.

William 35:00
The categories that you have, Paul Sorry, sorry to interrupt. The categories that y’all have created are probably similar to some of the categories that other corporations are going to kind of think about. And as they return to work, do do do suggest that people put that into the, the actual job ad itself so that the candidate knows that, or is that something that you want to discuss as you kind of go through the process?

Paul 35:25
I think if you’ve sorted it, I look, and I respect that some companies may not be there when we are trying to figure it out. I think if you’ve sorted it out, like our approach with our job descriptions, and our postings now is whatever we’ve told employees, we’re putting out there. So they know. And they understand like, I’m really working for remote work, hey, these, you know, these software engineering jobs in Indeed are all remote. This is great.

I’m looking at this, just like we encourage our clients and anybody hiring to put salary ranges in job descriptions. So they know, kind of the more information you can put out there, I think the better chance you have of being the you know, the job that they click on are one of the few jobs they click on because they’ve got a lot of information to make a good decision.

William 36:07
That’s right. That’s right. And that’s the whole goal is to, for them to be able to make the right decision. You give them the information. Paul, I can talk to you all day. And unfortunately, I know you have liked to get on and do other work today. So but thank you so much. This is an important topic. I’m glad we got to talk a little bit about it today. And just thanks for coming on the show.

Paul 36:26
Thanks so much for having me, William, I always appreciate these good conversations with you. Hopefully I’ll talk to you again soon.

William 36:31
Alright, my friend. Thank you. And thanks for everyone else for listening to the RecruitingDaily podcast. Until next time.