 Let me share my screen. Perfect. And we have our panel guests on Bobby, so we should be good to go. So I'm going to say you go ahead and take control and kick it off. And then I'll be ready for the panel discussion or monitor for questions. Okay. Can you see my screen? Looks perfect. Awesome. Now let's get started. So again, this is a blockchain employee. This is a hyperledger event that we try to run every season. It's a four-part event. The first part we geared towards just an introduction to the blockchain job environment or career environment, like what are the new jobs? What do they look like? How do your skills transfer? And then the second event we usually geared towards employers. Like what are their pipelines? What jobs are they going to need to be filled? What do they need to fill them? What do these jobs look like? How do you get them? And then tonight is our third event and it more is geared towards getting yourself ready to get that job. So we have a great panel from Accenture to talk about what they're looking for when they do the interview. We have some hints and some skills to get you all organized and ready to get to the interview. And then finally we have this great job fair in the beginning of where you can actually sit at tables, breakout rooms and discuss with people who have the jobs almost like an impromptu interview. Get your foot in the door and maybe get you an actual second interview soon or even move further up the chain there. So we're going to get started. This is, I think I said it, I just have to grab my screen here. Okay, so this is a hyperledger event. We have to display this lovely antitrust policy. Is that working? There we go. So this is just how to behave on this call. If you'll take a minute to read it, it'll be on the screen for a second. Okay. So again, this is the third part in a four part series. The last part is on November 2nd. Today is geared towards getting you that job and the things you need to do, the steps you need to take to get there. I am Bobby miscar. I am from ledger Academy. I run a project called the giving chain and I'm on the hyperledger technical steering committee is Jim ready to introduce himself. Sure. And why am I getting an echo? Hold on. Yeah, so Jim Mason, I work with hyperledger for five years now. I've been in a variety of roles. Fabric documentation have worked as the leader of the hyperledger public sector group. And also the leader of the hyperledger Boston meetup as well. And have basically been working in the blockchain space on delivering different types of solutions for a variety of companies. And that's my background. And then we have John. Yeah, thanks, Bobby. I'm John carpenter. I run the global blockchain summit. I'm also the co-chair of the learning materials working group with Bobby. And right now I'm working on updating the university curriculum. That is published by hyperledger. I run the Denver meetup group as well. And I've been involved in the blockchain space now for a number of years. Thank you, John. So this is some announcement that we start off with for the community. This is just general things that are going on. So the job fair is December 2nd. It will be with the people who have the jobs and you'll sit down and you'll chat with them. So that's a must come to event. These are meetup events. So there's just like our meetup group. There's meetups internationally and globally. Here are some of the events that are happening. That one is happening Saturday in India. Then there's a Budapest one, a Tokyo. And then again, the Budapest are very active meetup group because they have even a third one coming up. Frankfurt has one and then again Tokyo and then again Budapest. So these are just some opportunities for you to sit in and listen to what's going on in these calls. Maybe ask some questions and get involved in those communities. Next up, we have an event happening in the telecom group, which is focused on doing or looking at solutions for blockchain in the telecom space. And that can take on a whole lot of forms. This particular one is talking about getting some non-programming languages into DLT. So it makes it easier for the roaming agreements to be enforced. So if you're at all interested in telecom or worked in telecom and you want to see how blockchain is coming up with solutions for that sector, please sit in on that call. The link is there and it's on the Hyperledger Wiki page, which will put this whole presentation on the website when we're done. So you can just grab it down. Then also we have the identity working group. They're trying to get more people involved in these solutions. So they're hosting kind of like an open house, I guess, for Aries and Indy. So if you've ever been curious about how identity is managed on the blockchain and the new ways that that's going to look, please go to those events. They are January and February. Again, the links are on the Hyperledger websites. This is a new view of the Hyperledger product line and solutions. And they are clickable. Follow the link on the screen there and you can click on any of these cards. It'll give you facts, history, anything you want to know about these projects is on those cards. So please look at that. It's kind of a revamped greenhouse forest where I'm moving out into a landscape view. And then again in Hyperledger, I'm having a little holiday party in my little Metaverse land where we're just going to go over new projects. If you have an idea that you would like to showcase, please let me know and we'll give you a booth on the Christmas or not Christmas. I'm sorry, excuse me, holiday event. And then this is another thing that's happening December 16th in Boston. This gentleman's book is out. It's well read and well accepted in the community. And he's discussing it at a Boston meetup. So that's the link for that. And then there's the women in tech meetup. They're meeting to do a virtual networking on November 30th. And there's a link for that as well. And just a little update on the giving chain. We wrapped up the mentorship program on Wednesday. My mentee gave a presentation. It was a live working demo using Firefly where we collect the donations and transfer them to NFTs. And that's how we transfer them through the giving chain. Again, it was fantastic experience working with mentees and seeing how all these young kids are so excited about this technology and the things they want to do. We just not only had the mentee that was from hyper ledger, but other people just donated their time like they did when we started this project two years ago. And it was a fantastic result. So I think all of the people who were helping out with that and then, okay, so now we're going to get started. I'm just going to talk just a few more minutes. I promise I won't take up too much of your time just to talk about how to get ready for what's happening in our next section, which is discussing what the interview process looks like and what the people with the jobs are looking for when you are face to face with having discussions with them. So the initial discussion is just going to be about how to get prepared. What do you have to do to get ready? So again, you really have to stop and ask yourself some questions when you're looking for a career in blockchain. So why are you changing careers? Why are you interested in moving into blockchain? What's your motivation? And if you've decided to actually make that move, you have to kind of like sell yourself. It's now an online market where things have changed. It's not the personal interview anymore. It's definitely a Zoom room interview that you're going to have initially. So ask yourself the questions. What are you looking for in a new career? What are your motivators? Are you motivated because you can't stand the job you're in? Are you motivated because you are just so hooked on the technology that you can't really think or focus on anything else but learning more about it? What is you do you want to remote career because you've had an in-person job forever and you don't want to go into the office and deal with traffic anymore because remote jobs now are just as easy to get as in-person ones were. So is that something that would be interesting you in this career shift that you're making? What makes you unique? Like how can you sell yourself for these positions? What's your special spark and what's your story? What happened to you and why are you extraordinary? Because everybody's extraordinary. You just have to market yourself right. And what have you accomplished? Not so much if you're just getting out of school but a lot of people are transferring into these fields because again it's like the Wild Wild West for jobs. New solutions are being created and jobs have to follow through the solution. So what have you done? How have you worked hard in other areas? Not necessarily blockchain but in other areas that make you stand out. So you do you do have to sell yourself and you need a personal brand because people aren't anymore meeting you and getting to know you over a cup of coffee or interviews face to face. They're going to look their perspective job candidate should expect their social media to be looked at by these people interviewing them and going to offer you positions because that's how the world is today. So social media, you got to ask yourself how do you see yourself? What do you think your social media looks like? And then really look at yourself and say what a weather people see. It's always interesting when you go to somebody else's computer and log in or use their login with them there of course and Google yourself from someone else's point of view. If you've never done it, you'd be surprised what comes up. So it's how other people see you too. And at some point these are going to overlap and that's where you find your personal brand is somewhere in the middle. So it's what you want to present then what people are actually going to take away from that. So okay, so now we know we have to sell ourselves. We have to get ourselves all our plan in a row for what we want to accomplish. What kind of job do we want? And does our social media and our backing up information reflect that? So let's see how we can get that done. So I'm very organized. And when I look for jobs or do anything, I organize myself. I have a personal Wiki page, which is something it's just like getting a calendar or a Zoom account. So I can store myself and get at it from any computer no matter where I am. This what I'm going to show you now also works in a Google Drive or in just your Windows basic directory just to get organized. So start a file that's called Job Search, Opportunity Search, Career Change, whatever you want and put it on your desktop. It should have a couple of folders in it. One would be Resume where you keep all your resumes, iterations of them because they should change weekly. If you're really looking for a job, you'd be trying to get things on there that you're involved in. References, cover letters, LinkedIn's, websites you control, your bio, your other information if you have a CV. Leads, have you heard of jobs? You don't want to lose or you're reading an article. You don't want to lose something that interests you or piques your interest because that's how, especially in such a new industry, that if you find yourself interested in something that you can pursue that, you will be recognized among the people who are also pursuing these new fields. So that's one way is to keep a list of your leads. And then resources. My resource page has a lot of YouTube videos from these events. They get recorded and then I take the link from the YouTube video so that if I'm filling something out, I have all my links, all my online YouTube videos or if I have another video somewhere else, I keep all my press clipping so to speak and there's not many of them, trust me. But the ones I have, I like to keep organized there. And this is the best way again to keep things on track for when you're moving forward. So that when you actually find a job that you want to apply for, these things are done and they're not overwhelming for you. So your resume, if you haven't been in the job market for a really long time, you don't have to do a standard resume. You can do what they call a functional resume, which sums up more of what you're experienced in your life. What have you accomplished that makes you special? And so don't have to worry if there's huge gaps in your employment. What did you accomplish in those times? Kind of getting yourself, selling yourself more on accomplishments than your educational credentials. Then there's the big one is your LinkedIn profile. This is very important. People will look in business at your LinkedIn profile. It should be bright. It should be cheery. It shouldn't be depressing. It shows that you're able to add pictures. You're able to summarize yourself, try to sell yourself. I won an award a year and a half ago. I put that picture up there and I'm up for a mentee global award this year. You've got to vote for me, so that's up there too. So I'm not only advertising myself. I'm trying to get an action item out of you as well. You always should list your most visible achievement first, the one you want people to see, the one that holds the most clout. So I'm on the technical steering committee of Hyperledger. I put that up there first because that's pretty impressive rather than nobody's sort of the giving chain yet. So that's second, but it's more important in my heart. So you have to use this as again, what you want to portray, not what you think you should have there, from the outside world looking in at you. And then next, references and cover letters. Key thing here is keep a file of templates. So if you are even slightly thinking about changing careers, you should start a file for templates for... Let me see if I can click this. References. So when you are dealing with someone, like after this, I'll say, John, I have this blank template for a reference for myself. Could you just fill it out and maybe add a comment about it? I'd really appreciate it. So you're asking someone to do something for you, but you're not making it too difficult. They don't have to create the reference letter. You just give them a blank form letter and they'll fill in the paragraphs and make you shine in the letter. But don't make it hard for them to have to start from scratch. Send them a template. And then when you get that information back, actively keep a file for all your references so that when, again, you actually do go to apply for a job, attaching references is a piece of cake. It's not something that you have to look for. So every project that you work on, if you have someone who you've worked with on your team, that you think thought you did a good job, send them that letter and get it on your file. It's always good to have something like that. And don't be afraid to ask people for letters. People like to have their opinion shared, so make it look like a win-win. And then the next thing is cover letters. Now, I use cover letters differently than most people. So I have the templates for the cover letters. I picked one or two that I like. And when I go to apply for a job, I customize the cover letter. And then I save that cover letter under that folder with the name of the company that I applied to. And every time some communication comes in, whether it's a rejection letter, whether it's a step-next-step letter or we need more information, I keep a running table of communications on that cover letter so that I know instantly where I am. Because if you're applying for more than two or three jobs at a time, it gets confusing. Who sent what? Where did it go? So I like to keep track of the job on the cover letter. And then I just save it as a living Word document that just keeps getting added to. So I can just go look at the tail of the tape and see what communications I've had with this company. How long did it take them to react to me? Was it right away? Am I moving quick? So that's a really good place to store information about what's going on. And then here's the real hard one, knowing what to do with social media. There are so many now ways to express yourself on social media. And it's hard to keep up with them. I know Hyperledger is having a working group set up just to figure out how to handle social media because it's just gone crazy. If you are dealing with NFTs or any kind of community that deals with NFTs, you must have Twitter and Discord. That's the only way they communicate. And they communicate often. And it's not just Discord or Twitter. They talk to each other. In order to get points on Discord, you have to post something on Twitter. They're crossing over. I kind of think of Facebook. I think I actually have. Yeah, Facebook is more for social networking with your family. That's where you put the family vacation pictures. I don't try to tie my Facebook account with any other account. That's kind of separate. So I know when everyone's birthday is. Twitter is more for blasting out of thought. You can tweet. We all know we can get you in trouble. So I stay away from tweeting. Instagram is photo sharing and moment sharing. It is more of, I guess, not so much business, but more social, but a lot of people do advertise their businesses and have Instagram accounts. And you can follow their Instagram accounts. And then again, we talked a little bit about Discord. We can share pictures, texts. You can build communities. There's a whole lot going on in Discord. And I think that's going to become more popular as the NFT market becomes more popular. So basically next is just sitting down and deciding, where do you want to work? Do you want to work? What do you want to do and where do you want to work? Do you want to work at a startup? Because there's a lot of those in this industry. Or do you want a company that's vetted already and been around for a while and like a corporate life with benefits and all those kind of perks that come with a nice, reliable company. And what kind of job do you want in this new industry? There's developers, managers, architects, consultants. There's just so many new jobs now. Community lead for NFT communities is huge. Artists. And there's just too many careers to list. Project managers, tech writers, anything that you have done can be applied into this new industry as it's building from the ground up. And then basically education. That's how I got my foot in the door. It's how I suggest everybody get their foot in the door and with the internet, all of these classes listed here are auditable, meaning you don't have to pay a dime to sit and read the entire curriculum. If you want the certificate, you pay for the exam. But the information is there and you can map the jobs directly to some of the classes. Obviously, if you want to be a blockchain developer, you take the blockchain developers course. So there's so much information just for you to grab and learn. And it's great to say I took the blockchain developers program in any list when you took the class because it's verifiable now. So you have to be honest about that. But so this is one way to do it. And also when you're looking for a job, if you kind of know the company you want to work for, go to their website. Accenture is coming to talk to us today. And if you're interested in jobs at Accenture, they have a newsletter. They have a career site. They have an education site. Get your name out there. See your name on the newsletter. Make some comments when people ask for your input. It's a great place to start getting involved and getting your name out there. So with that, the only other thing is community. Blockchain is about community. It is not a single sport. It is a team sport. You must build a community around these projects. And that's done by working groups and special interest groups. So most companies in a consensus, the government blockchain association, hyper ledger, all have working groups dealing with different areas. So working groups basically focus on a technology. Hyper ledger has a smart contract working group. It has learning materials working group. We're focused on those things. Whereas the special interest groups are more sector dedicated. So there's a public sector which deal with public sector issues. So when government and society come together, how does that look with blockchain solutions? There's a social impact. That's where the giving chain got its start, was through the social impact special interest group. And we saw before the telecom, they're having a special interest group. There's an identity working group. So again, each one of these companies has working groups you can get involved in where they just want your input, maybe help out writing a white paper or just maintaining a wiki page or a website. So there's a lot for people to do, even if they don't know how to code a blockchain or spin one up, it's fine. There's so many careers. So the interview, there's just a few points. The only one that really matters is that you're on time. If you're late for an interview, don't even bother. You have to be on time. You have to be professional. You have to know if this environment and culture is what you want. If you want a culture where you remote work is what they are promoting and they don't have an office and you want to work in an office, that's not a job for you. Know the job description, which I'm sure Jim will mention in a little while. That's kind of confusing sometimes, but there's good clues in there as to what you'll be doing. And practice your interviews questions. Have your sister, your brother, your mom, your girlfriend, your dog ask you the questions and actually start and finish answering them. And you'll wind up getting further organization in your answers if you try that out. And prepare examples of your work. So when they're going to say, what have you been up to? Have talking points four or five. I always use the idea approach, which is I state my case, I develop it, I give you an example, and then the rest is evaluation and quizzes. But you have to start by telling everyone what you're going to be talking about. And then tell them the specific talking points. And that's better if you have it organized in your head. And then ask questions of the interview. Here's a really good question when they say, do you have any questions of me? You can say, what does a typical day for someone in this position look like? That's a great question. And it shows that you're really interested. I, again, can't tell you enough to research the position and the company's culture. What are the goals of the company? And do they in line with your goals? So now I'm done with my little spiel about what you should do to get yourself ready for the interview. I'll be around for questions after the panel. And I'm going to turn it over to John. And he's going to discuss some questions with the panelists. They'll introduce themselves first. And it's all yours, John. Great, Bobby. Thank you very much. And it's always a pleasure to see your wonderful presentations. Perfect information for any candidates looking for jobs in the blockchain space. Really appreciate that. So today we have the great pleasure of having two people from Accenture, as well as Jim Mason from Paramount join us today. So I'll just kick it off with just a short overview and then maybe they can give a detailed description of their role. So we have Jennifer Dutchman and she's a technology recruiting specialist with Accenture. And she has over eight years of recruiting and technology. She's based out of Dallas and she kind of supports three groups within Accenture. That is the tech innovation group, including blockchain, industry X, and then global cloud first. And we also have Michael Sperber. And he's a talent acquisition lead at Accenture. And he's got over 11 years experience with Accenture based out of Tampa, Florida, and he supports the same groups, the tech innovation group, which includes the blockchain practice, industry X and global cloud first. And then also joining our panel, we have Jim Mason. And he's a blockchain expert with Paramount software. And he's had a lot of years of experience using hyperledger fabric. And he's also done a lot of great interesting public sector projects. So thanks to all of you for joining today. So at this point, I'm just going to start with Jennifer and maybe you can give us a little more background and insight as to kind of what your role is with Accenture. Sure. I am a technology recruiting specialist with Accenture. And in terms of my role, I work with our business stakeholders in terms of their hiring needs, supporting them on posting their roles and job descriptions, and also monitoring the applicant pool, doing the screening process. And then with qualified applicants continuing their interview process through the Accenture interview process to hire. So it's basically from start to finish on a particular position that I may be supporting for one of our business stakeholders. Perfect. And then Michael, can you also give us a little bit of more background on your role as well? Sure. Absolutely. Hello, everyone. My name is Michael Sperber. I'm one of our talent acquisition leads here at Accenture focused on our technology business, of course. I know that John shared some of the stakeholders that are primary stakeholders. But my focus is leading a recruiting team that focuses on certain technology skills, building relationships with those business groups, making sure that we're helping them with all of their recruiting needs, and staying, you know, we build our relationships with our HR leaders as well, always focused on our entire talent supply, a complete overview of our talent supply function, making sure that we're looking at our resources holistically, not just from a recruiting perspective. And again, I've been with Accenture for 11, 11 plus years now. And nice to meet everyone. Great. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate having you. Jim, you also want to get a little bit of overview as to your role with Paramount and what you're doing in the blockchain space. Yeah. So I've worked with many companies in many roles, most of them outside of blockchain. And so, and also for a quite a long number of years. So the world for me has changed a lot from when I started professionally to where I am now in terms of how companies operate, how HR operates, how roles are defined. And so on. The one thing that is consistent, I'll say it has nothing to do with blockchain is just the fact that if you are on, if you wind up in a role with a company that's a good company, what's going to happen is their benefits may vary company to company, the size will be different and those things. But you'll know that you have not just an HR department, but more importantly, you'll be on a team with a manager you report to that's going to give you what I call good career guidance throughout your time at that company. And when I look back, that's probably been the biggest thing. I mean, it's great that HR is doing a class A job for you on their end based on whatever the company can provide. But to me, most of the value that I got out of a business and most of the growth I had, had everything to do with the team I was on and everything to do with the manager I was on and how we all communicated well on both sides. So it's not just how they communicated to me, but how I shared my concepts, my ideas back with them. And so when that worked well, it went great. And when it doesn't, you have to try to figure out ways to address it and approve the communication for your team and maybe your manager or whoever else you may report to. So, and I will say, I tell my grandkids this, the two biggest words in the dictionary, the rest are just sort of there for fluff. They're nice. They mean something. But the two most important ones are expectations and consequences. And if you can look at all the relationships you have, including what you are trying to accomplish in your own life and figure out how to set expectations well and communicate those and understand the consequences in all those relationships, you'll be very successful basically. Perfect. Yeah, Jim, that's great advice and great understanding. So what I'd like to do here is really have this be a good free flowing discussion. So I have some preliminary questions that I want to go through with the panel. But what I'd also like to encourage is everyone who's in attendance, feel free to post questions in the chat. And as they fit in and are appropriate to the panel discussion, we'll bring them up as we go along. And so what I'd like to do now is really cut over and talk about something that I think Jennifer touched on in her introduction. And since this event's all about the candidates, and we've already had a couple of events that really have gone and showed, you know, what the wealth of opportunity coming from the companies is. And, you know, really what it looks like to be recruited in the space. This time I really want to focus on how the candidate process works, what the candidates need to be aware of and how they position themselves when applying for positions. And so I'm going to run through a series of questions, but then also any of the panel members want to bring up anything specific that they think would be relevant to really educating the people in attendance, feel free to do so. So Jennifer, I'm going to start with you. And you talked about the screening process at Accenture. So maybe can you go in a little bit more detail here to give an expectation for anyone on the meeting call today, what the Accenture screening process looks like? Sure, absolutely. So in looking at an applicant that has applied generally there is thought before the job is posted in terms of what the specific requirements are or the minimum requirements for a particular position. So when looking at applying for a job and a role at Accenture, it is important to take the time investment to take a look at what role you are applying for. Do you meet the particular requirements that are posted? And then once I have an applicant that meets the requirements, then I will spend about 30 minutes with that individual doing some introductions, giving an introduction of Accenture as well as going through a process of their background and experience, why they're interested in Accenture. And if that individual meets the requirements, then I would move them forward to an interview with a member of the hiring team as a next step. Perfect. And Michael, is there any other specific things related to the screening process that you want to surface as far as how Accenture handles it? I think Jim did a great job. By the way, I'd like to compliment Bobby as well. Bobby, you answered many of these questions. You did an exceptional job in your initial overview. I think we need to hire you as a recruiter. Thank you so much. I'll send you my resume and you have my LinkedIn profile in the chat. And again, I agree. Bobby is very talented and an exceptional collaborator. So anything that you can do to work with Bobby, you're in great shape, Michael. Okay. Back over to you to kind of weigh in a little bit more on the screening process. Anything specific you want to add beyond the great coverage that Jennifer did? No, I mean, where that's that initial conversation with the candidates. You know, where a lot of the things Jen and Bobby touched on where we're trying, we really want to understand what we're looking for excellent communication skills, motivation, the motivation of the candidate, the type of environment they're looking to work in because here at Accenture, the types of candidates that we're really looking for are people that work well in a team environment that they're able to work on project teams and they're able to collaborate. So there are questions that we ask in that screening interview to try to get a sense for that. We want to definitely see that the candidate has prepared for that initial conversation with our recruiters that they understand the role of the role that we're discussing with them. And certainly that there's that they're motivated and driven by an interest in working for Accenture. They thought this through and that they're motivated. So just a couple of other things. Yeah, no, that's perfect, Michael. And I think those are great insights and are really going to cover a lot of the additional questions that I'm going to have for the panel. So Jim, from your perspective, how does Paramount view the screening process? And maybe yourself, I know you've done a lot of recruiting and looking for talent. What do you see as the main screening process? So, well, it's very different. It depends on one, the company. Two, who's doing a hiring? What the role is? I think all those factors play into it. So smaller companies certainly tend to be less formal. It doesn't mean they don't have a process. They do, but having been through large company processes, IBM, Fidelity, Citizens Bank, big companies like Accenture, they have a very well defined process. Usually I'll say lots more steps than the average small company does, or certainly a startup. So I've had, I've had at the startup level, and I've been in a couple of those. You're usually there may not even be an HR department, honestly. I've had conversations where I applied for a role. I got one call from a hiring manager about the role. We talked for, I don't know, five minutes. And then he goes, you know, I really think you're not a good fit. And it's like, okay, fine. Thanks for the call. Boom. So you hang up and you're done. Except for the fact that I've had. Person call me back and say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've had person call me back and say, you know, I went ahead and created a different role. And I think you're a great fit for this role that I just made up because I think I like your background and I think I like working with you. So sometimes. I think when you get a, what I call the form letter reject, that's one thing. But sometimes when you have a quote, an in-person conversation with somebody who is hiring. It can be very. It's hard to predict in the sense how it'll turn out. But I'll say I'm a good fit for this role. I fit for the role of my background. And that's how it should move forward. Probably normally does. But I will say like the paramount. We were trying to hire contract. Not permanent help. Sort of some projects. And I was frustrated with the. HR staff. Not being able to find the right candidates. So I wrote my own job description said, this is what I'm looking for. It's got to have these core skills, and I told the HR team, I said, look, I do not want to see anybody and don't want to see any resumes unless they've covered the core skills. And having been on the other side of that coin with job descriptions, a lot of times I know companies don't always get those job descriptions right. So a lot of times people have been discouraged as they look at a core set of skills and it says, oh, they list Oracle, DB2, Postgres, MySQL, Mongo, CouchDB, Derby, every database on the planet. You go, well, I only have four of those. So I'm not going to apply because it's said in the core skills you need these nine databases. And it's like, no, usually the people that are writing those haven't got a clue what their team is actually working with in many cases. So the hard part, I think, for a candidate is trying to read through how good was the person writing the job description. So in some cases, and I'll say, and I'll let Michael go after that one, but at a bigger company, there's probably a more formal process to make sure the job description is properly written to identify Oracle core skills for nice to have skills or preferred skills. And that's a critical thing. So it's very hard if the job description isn't well written because you'll apply, either apply for something you shouldn't have or don't apply for something you should have. So I think that's a key, I'll quote, gating factor for a lot of us with that. I'll stop there. Yeah, that's perfect, Jim. I appreciate that. And so I think what I'm going to kind of do is jump down to something I think that we should cover here, which is, you know, what I heard from all of you was, you know, you want to have a motivated team player that's prepared, understands the company they're going to work for, understand the role with the company and the ability to collaborate. One of the things I guess I'm going to touch base with, I'll start with you, Jennifer, is, you know, let's say that a candidate applies for a certain position. And let's say that they're, you know, in general, a very qualified candidate. But the position that they applied to is what Jim was talking about, you know, may not be a perfect fit for them. But yet, you know, Accenture has so many different roles in such a large organization. How would you handle somebody who's maybe coming in for, you know, position A, whereas realistically, they might be a perfect fit for position B, but position A really is not where they need to go. Sure. And generally, when an applicant applies for a particular role, I may be or somebody on my team may be working other roles with a different hiring manager or different titles, different experience. So it's really collaborating across the team. If you have somebody that is maybe not a fit for your role, or they may be a fit for another role, or even speaking with the hiring manager about, I interviewed this person, they're not a fit for this role. What do you think about another position or something that you may have coming up? So the conversation doesn't always end there, especially in looking at for good talent. Where else could they possibly fit within the organization? You know, the very best recruiters, and Jen is one of those, their primary focus is always on networking. One of their primary areas that they're focused on would always be networking and thinking more broadly and collaborating, back to collaborating again. But networking is at the core of what a recruiter should be focused on. So it's great to hear that that's the way that you're focused on it, Jen, where you're looking at candidates and you're thinking more broadly and you're thinking about, you know, holistically from an organization, organizational perspective, because we know we have so many different needs, that is the absolute right way to deal with it. Yeah, that sounds wonderful. And it sounds like it creates really a wealth of opportunity within a company like Accenture, where you have a very talented individual and say, okay, they come across through this job posting, but in reality, they're a great fit for another role. So, Jen, maybe you want to weigh in a little bit on that as far as, you know, fit within an organization, I think you really touched on it from your own personal experience as far as, you know, talking to a company, and then they came back and said, well, you're really right for position B. Yeah, so that's right. And I've had those kind of calls happen a few times, but primarily the reason that happened for me is just that you established an excellent relationship with maybe a hiring manager or whoever, or in some cases I've been had, I know I'll pick on Accenture as an example, if somebody has a lot of roles to fill and you've applied for a job, and they say, well, you know, you're not a good fit for that job, but you're talking on somebody in a screening interview after you go through an analysis, and I've had this happen, larger companies like that will say, wait a second, we have a functional analyst role that might be a better fit for your background. And so they'll give you the opportunity to sort of redirect and many times I hear, here's three other things I think you might be a good fit for, and they'll give you that opportunity to apply. The key thing is if you're talking to somebody in HR, they're going to be interested, among other things, are you qualified for the basics and the role, but they're also looking and they understand very well, the team and the company fit. And so maybe, again, pick on somebody like Accenture or Fidelity, some big company and say, well, it's a very mature company, but in certain areas, like blockchain space, maybe they operate differently in that team, because it's not the same as the rest of the company. So again, the HR person is, I'll call it sort of a lighthouse or a gatekeeper going into an organization can help you understand what the different options are. And honestly, looking at job descriptions, wherever they come from, whether somebody sends me one on LinkedIn or I go out to Indeed or wherever I find them, the reality is, even though they try to give you a little bit about the company and the team background, most of those things are generally not near enough guidance, I think. And if you're lucky enough to at least get to the point you're talking to somebody in HR, that's the chance where you, as a candidate, have a great opportunity to quickly share who you are, what you're interested in, and why you're interested in that company, that role, maybe that team as well. And they can give you, they're usually well prepared to give you a lot of feedback on that. You know, and a couple of other quick points. The other thing you really want a recruiter should be doing is they should be very open to exploratory conversations with candidates. We do that quite often, where we're connecting with candidates, understanding their background, and then seeing where they might be a match across our organization. The second point I wanted to mention is we've done a lot of work on our job descriptions. Jim, I know you were talking about job descriptions. They're not perfect yet, but what we've tried to do is simplify them, speak more to what the person will actually be doing. You'll notice in our postings, you know, it's who we are, you know, what you'll be doing, things like that. So it's very to the point. And then we've also tried to limit the number of basic qualifications and preferred skills. So we get it right down to what we're really looking for. It's helped to a degree, and we're still working on it, but it's in line with what you were talking about, Jim. Yeah, great point, Michael. I think when you do that, what's really cool is you wind up getting, in a sense, a broader net of people coming at you. And then you as the recruiter, a representative of the company or the team, have a ton of flexibility in a sense, fielding all those different applicants coming in. And I would agree with you, your point about the job description, if it's just one of these comprehensive hit lists on everything there is in the world of data as an example, you're going to discourage 75% of people who are probably qualified, but go, I don't have two of these, so I'm not going to apply. Great. Okay, perfect. One of the things that was mentioned in the course of conversation was around networking. And so I know we're talking a lot about it within the context of, within the recruitment space. But I just want to lean into a little bit more, since this is all about the candidate. And Michael or Jennifer, any recommendations that you have about networking that could benefit the candidate with getting in front of HR and eventually earning a role? Yes, I have a few tips. So I think, again, try to prepare, give a lot of thought as to the type of role and the type of company or companies that you would want to work for in a short. And then when you're networking and trying to connect with those organizations, people within those organizations, it's a slow process towards connecting with first one person, with then five people that could become 15 people. It's all about making connections to open doors and to get to the right people, to have a conversation, a discussion, to explore opportunity. Opportunity for you as a candidate and opportunity for the organization to hopefully add your skills and experience. Jen, did you want to add to that? Sure. And then anyone that you also may personally know that may be working in a particular space or you're interested in what they're doing. People always like to talk and help people out. So it's always good to kind of make a list as well of personal people you may know in a particular role to see how they may be able to help or introduce you to different people in the network for you. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, Jen, that's a great point. I guess a lot of us, myself included, have actually done mentoring like that, right? For different people, different groups and whatever. And you're trying to help people understand what the opportunity is how to prepare and all that. And so if you find somebody, as you said, who was already in the role that you're aiming at or in a team you're aiming at, it's really great if you can make those kind of contacts and get that feedback. Yeah, that's perfect. And I would say, you know, attending a forum like this is a great way to network and, you know, see the different people who are in attendance and connect with the recruiters from Accenture and Paramount. And then also Bobby's done a great job of posting in the chat here of a lot of the Hyperledger working groups. And, you know, attending those working groups and participating in the Hyperledger ecosystem is another great way to really network. I think a good question that came through on the chat from Justice was around, what do you recommend for a recent grad that would like to engage with a great company like Accenture? Because they're going to have, you know, a limited network in the business space. And they see a lot of opportunities for senior roles. But I'm sure there's a host of opportunities for junior roles within Accenture. So Jennifer or Michael, you want to touch base on that? Jen, you want me to go? Sure. Okay. We do focus much of our campus entry level recruiting efforts at particular schools. That said, it's still about networking. So as an example, now you have two contacts at Accenture. You have Jen and I, right? So you should definitely connect with the two of us. And you can share your resume and we can get it in the hands of our campus entry level team to consider it. If you've had excellent training in blockchain, as an example, we may be able to, you know, share it with some of our leaders in that organization to think about, you know, that could think about it from an entry level perspective as well. Perfect. Another thing I think that Bobby did a great job on is posting in here that there's Hyperledger mentorships. And Bobby did a great job recently with a mentorship at Hyperledger. And then also there's a number of hackathons that are hosted either by Hyperledger or other blockchain development companies. So definitely for a recent grad getting involved with a hackathon is a good way to engage with the community as well. Jen, do you have any other thoughts around networking or engagement there? Yeah. So actually, I would say in my world, I've been on both ends of this thing. So I was, I'll quote somebody with no experience in many cases earlier on in my career, moving in trying to move into roles. And it was challenging. And we didn't have as many opportunities then as we do now to get engaged. So when I think of engagement, if I look and say, okay, I'm interested in the space before I even go to Accenture and say, hey, you know, whatever, I graduated top of my class, but I have no skills related to any of your jobs. It's, you think about how do I get engaged? So first of all, there's probably industries that you're interested in more than others, that's one area to focus on. The second thing is to saying what kinds of roles am I interested in? What are those skill sets? And then back to Bobby's point, which I think is tremendous, there's a tremendous set of opportunities. And Michael said earlier, not just Accenture, but a lot of companies who are larger will actually recruiting directly at schools and so on. And they'll actually have programs to bring in people and maybe give them basic training in an area. But if you don't fall into the category that you get one of those opportunities, then I'd encourage you to take a look at the kind of things Bobby was suggesting. And there's plenty of what I call free or low cost training available today that didn't exist 10, 20 years ago. So if you want to be what I call self trained on some of these technologies, it's either inexpensive or free in many cases to get some of that training so that you at least can move in to say I want to be a blockchain project manager, I wanted this, and I have at least attended these courses. I know something about blockchain, now you go to Accenture and say I've done the research on the company. I know you do consulting in these areas and I have this kind of an interest. What's an opportunity for me? You've in a sense developed your skill set and background well enough to start saying I have value to add because I've done some homework in a way to try to prepare myself for those roles. On the other hand, I would say like anybody, there's people who have spent a quarter million dollars on a college degree and have found that their skill sets unfortunately didn't line up with anything. I think I would again push back and look toward especially larger companies I'll say that do have the ability to provide more guidance whether they have recruiting exercises you can go to on campus or go to their website, ask questions there. Most of these companies, the bigger companies at least I'll say not little ones but bigger ones will probably have at least a quote a filtering system that lets you ask questions directly off the career site and say hey what about this what if I don't have background. A lot of these what I call automated HR systems will at least give you some feedback and eventually help point you in the right direction of where you might be up to knock on the door for sure but it's it's not a simple process honestly I mean you know I don't know Accenture well but a lot of the companies it is a lot of homework you're going to be knocking on a lot of doors getting a lot of feedback and you'll improve your own preparation you know and a lot of the other things that Bobby had mentioned earlier about what it takes to prepare to in a sense be better in a sense qualified to go after certain roles for sure there is a lot of work in that I'll tell you this in my own career and it was different earlier but I'll say when I was out of work looking for work I put in more hours of work than when I was actually working for somebody when I'm working for somebody what you have to deliver is well defined what your responsibilities are or hopefully clear if you're working with a manager on a team you know what you have to deliver what you have to do and so on but when you're not working you're saying oh my god I've got so many potential things I could be working on and you wind up in at least in my case doing more work not less and that ignores the whole hiring process itself you know I would just add to that I wouldn't view I wouldn't view your years in school as just just school it's similar to even when you're working when you're working for an Accenture if you were just focused on your primary role and you never thought about getting involved in other projects so while you while the years that you're in school and you know preparing for your bachelor's and everything pursuing your bachelor's there are there are probably opportunities where you can get involved in some type of blockchain project or research at your university some types of types of internships it's all about finding things that you could highlight for a potential employer where that would could potentially stand out to an employer to get you in the door for that first opportunity yeah absolutely and I was going to talk some more about bobby being a mentor and I think that there's a great opportunity if anyone who's attending this session wants to engage with hyper ledger there's really a wealth of opportunity for graduates or students that are still in uh college to be able to get engaged with the blockchain community and develop their skillset uh the other thing I'm going to just comment on here it looks like Matt and Vic have been reaching out to people on chat and that's really showing that the community is engaged and there's opportunities by networking here so hats off to both of them uh next thing I want to jump into is really you know Jim talked about you know the level of effort that goes into applying for a job and so really what I want to kind of highlight now is my second question which is what can a candidate do to prepare prepare for a specific role and are is a cover letter important linkedin profile you know what what things should a candidate have ready to go in a very you know easy to read format for a recruiter so yes Jennifer I'm going to start with you okay I think in just in looking at at resumes you you just can't have maybe one resume version um really take the time to consider what you're applying for and tailor that resume for that particular position but also keep it clear and concise with some of the major points of your experience but also any accomplishments that you may have done in your career so you know you don't have to have something really long and cumbersome but something that's simple and clear targeted to the role that you're applying for with with your experience and accomplishments so I guess my follow on to that Jennifer are you looking for more of a functional resume or what kind of length are you looking for and and really what are the highlighted areas that you would suggest a candidate really put their effort sure so in in terms of you know a technology type or blockchain type position there may be some technical requirements that are listed in the job description so making sure that those you know why it may be part functional it may have some technical component to it in terms of maybe programming languages you know courses you've done certifications so I would say it's you know a bit of a blend making sure that you've got your responsibilities covered but also your technology skills as well okay perfect Michael your thoughts on the resume or whatever LinkedIn profile updates or anything else you'd recommend yeah well I agree with all of Jen's points for sure I think a resume should definitely not be longer than two pages and I think even two pages tends to be too long you may only have two minutes of the recruiters time where the hiring manager's time that they're looking at this you definitely want to be very clear and concise and detailing your experience in a in a in that way I I do think that the LinkedIn profile is is important for from a networking perspective and I think all of the tips that Bobby shared earlier so I won't just repeat them I think they were very good tips I don't think that the cover letter is important however I do think communication within email is very important that's your first that might be your first contact with an organization you want you want to make sure that they see you as someone who's communicating in a very clear concise quick manner you know where it's it's thought out but it's clear into the point and they can quickly understand what you're trying to communicate so I think that's more important than the cover letter yeah so basically on the follow-up to you or the initial outreach to you just a very clear concise well written you know to the point email is really going to carry the day as far as on the recruiter side looking at that candidate yes and if you're messaging with them on LinkedIn as an example same the same thing applies very clear professional and concise perfect great great point Jim what are your thoughts on that uh well I think Jennifer was done on about the concept and I let's put it this way I've made all the mistakes you can make and as a candidate and trying to get hired I'd say the reverse of it is I agree with her a thousand percent and Michael said it too about the cover letter being less important the reality is there's a job description and you hope it's well written you hope it's properly targeted if it is I would follow her advice and say yeah the resume I'm going to push in is going to have to be really targeted to that job description with my skill sets my interests and my experience that's relevant to that and so taking her idea I've had the most excents when I created what I call a resume factory you are who you are if you've been around three years or 30 years it doesn't matter you sort of have this inventory of who you are you have to pull out of that inventory of who you are and what you've done and what your interests are and then reform reformat it to what that job description is and back to Michael's point you'll then wind up with a quote a clean sharp short resume that doesn't take a lot to absorb and they'll quickly go through what I call the hit points and say oh here's the job description on the left here's this resume on the right the hit points are good I just did hire we're not actively hiring but for any career roles but I did hire a contractor recently and the key was the resume was two pages as Michael said it was clear on the first page he hit the key items I was looking for very clearly and so as a result I said to the person in HR just get this guy in and they had a bunch of other resumes I said no I don't even need to talk to those people from the resume they're not close enough to what I need very clearly and so they brought him in we talked he asked me after a 15 minute conversation he goes well what's the next steps I said none you're hired you fit but the key to it is as Michael said was the efficiency of that communication he was efficient in the resume he was um as Michael said he was very clear and focused in the interview and so I knew what we needed and he in a sense brought that to the table communicated very well and it was not a complex process we didn't need to extend it at all it kept it simple perfect yep makes sense Jim uh so on the flip side of that we talked about you know clear concise professional communication can you give me some pointers on what a candidate should avoid when communicating with HR trying to get a new role any thing that you've run across in your careers it really was a you know thing to avoid and something you want to get across to the group here oh is that to me or michael or well you can go ahead jim if you're right I have a lot to say I'll let you start off with it how's that I'll be fast I'll say this when I was at Delaware and I was an MBA student the university um was trying to promote us we were the whatever the fellowship students that were coming out and graduating so they created a book that they sent off to all these corporations of saying put your resume in there we're going to send it out to whatever it's a hundred corporations that they know about you in effect um and coming out of Delaware with a master in MBA you know I wasn't going to see extension or IBM showing up knocking on my campus to say who's here for interviews um so they did that they sent out the book the guy next to me made one small mistake on his resume he put together a very bland sort of boring resume which in itself wasn't bad but at the bottom it says what are your interests and hobbies which you don't have to put that into a resume but he included that section at the bottom he puts above all a Philly's fan that's like you talk about information that's totally irrelevant I mean maybe Michael is a Philly's fan maybe that would have reached Michael but I would say 99 out of 100 uh you know recruiters are just gonna say what so the most important thing in this guy's life that he has to communicate is that he's a Philly's fan um doesn't really go far so there are things logically that you do not want to share you want to really be focused more toward who who who how do you want somebody to see you what's important for them as and I think Bobby said this nicely before is you want to say put yourself in their shoes what do they what do they want to know about you and if you're throwing stuff in there that's unrelated you've got I'll say that one and 20 chance of saying gee I like fishing too and maybe there is something small there but for the most part all you're gonna do is distract and slope the process and probably reduce your shot at getting considered by throwing that kind of stuff in there okay perfect Michael Jim that was very well said by the way you made me laugh and know I'm not a Philly's fan but see I'm not sharing which team I like because it's not relevant to you that's right um yeah so you you want to remain very you should be very positive in these discussions in these meetings you know you know things like politics should never come up in any discussion it should be it should be a it should be a very professional type of conversation polite you know hello how are you make sure that you're staying focused listening even more than you speak which is always a good practice making sure that you hear the questions first and then give a clear again a clear concise answer so you don't want to be talking over the interviewer or answering a question that they didn't actually ask that shows that you you're not listening very well um those are a few things like Jen would you like to add to that as well sure and always remind yourself what you're applying for just kind of going back to the cover letter I was looking through an application the other day and the cover letter was for some other role it wasn't even for you know the position I was reviewing so just always make sure you're making notes because it can be a lot to to manage if you're talking to a lot of different companies just ensure you you understand what you're applying for at the current time and the discussion you're having at the current time yeah really that attention to detail that Bobby was talking about and you know be laser focused on the role and make sure that when you're submitting any content or communication regarding the role it's spot on and only for that role so great advice yeah I think John I think um I'd say Jen and um Michael both made great points when you're discussing and when you're having a conversation it should be a conversation one and I don't know if I'll ask the two of them I don't know if it's a trick you guys pull but one of the coolest things is they'll say okay so here's this job it's an architect for X and you're applying for this I got your app in front of me I've got your resume now I've got you on the phone I'm asking you so Jim tell me about why you registered an extension maybe that might be a starting question um you get a shot as Michael said to respond the trick is you don't want to make that response a 20 minute response because you're not going to have that long right so he made the point he's dead on you got to think of okay I'm going to get asked why do I care about the company why do I care about the role those are questions I know we're going to come up in the interview how do I get my answer to be focused and down to you know I'll say less than two minutes to answer the question I don't want to go over two minutes like a secret bound group what happened and I've done this many times it's somebody like Michael say so Jim tell me about yourself well myself goes on for a thousand years I'm almost as old as the freaking pyramids so if if I'm going through telling about myself I've now burned out the entire interview and Michael is going to say to me well it's been great talking to you you're a wonderful guy Jim but now I've got 30 seconds left anything you want to say before we wrap up and it's like yeah well it was great talking to you so I couldn't emphasize enough about the fact that you have to have a balanced conversation so they're going to ask you they want to ask you questions they want you to answer stuff they don't want you to go off on the history of what you care about you know I mean and forgetting politics if you care about the insight of computers they're not going to want to know about that they just want to maybe at a high level you know what what is what's passionate what are you passionate about what drives you what why do you care about this might what what value do you see yourself bringing to this company but every one of those answers has to be short and you have to push it back to them and say you know does that is is that the answer not the is that the answer you're looking for but you have to move the conversation back to them you know is there anything else I can add to that or is that enough something like that you have to flip the ball back over the net and give them a chance to continue and only because I've made that mistake enough times I can speak to the value of what Michael gave you on that one I want to kind of shift over to a couple of great questions in the chat here so the one that came from Mark that I think is very relevant here is as a recruiter let's just say that the person submitted a nice concise functional resume with all the details you're looking for but we all know that LinkedIn is really kind of your online CV and if they have other details or jobs that are outside of what they've really focused on for the resume that they've submitted how is that viewed with a recruiting perspective well I think that Jen you could speak to this as well of course but I think everything should line up you know it shouldn't be two different stories that you're seeing the resume should align with the actual background and experience of the person and if I were to go look at the LinkedIn profile there should be no difference there perfect and that's exactly the right answer that I thought you were going to put out there Michael so Jennifer do you have anything different to add feel for you so I would definitely agree because you know if something if you maybe changed careers you can explain that during a conversation versus if something looks like it's missing then that may cause more you know questions or time to explain something when it could just be right there on paper perfect okay and I agree with what Michael said is everything needs a lineup perfectly so whether you're looking at a functional resume or their LinkedIn profile it should all be one lineup then the other question we had was from Matt uh and he was asking about is it okay for them to ask what are competitive salaries when uh talking to a recruiter I think a better conversation is to just kind of talk about have a discussion as to what your needs might be your expectations and then you know and when when you get to that point in the discussion of course when it's appropriate it's certainly not at the beginning of the discussion and it should be when there I think towards the end of that discussion if the recruiter is bringing that up I know when I conduct screen interviews oftentimes I'll touch on benefits like high level benefits I'll share information later in more detail about our benefits uh total rewards and all of that oftentimes the candidate would prefer not even having that discussion in that first call about compensation um recruiters for the most part know have a have a sense a very strong sense as to whether or not the comp is eventually going to line up based upon the skills and experience of the candidate usually we have more of a comp related discussion uh if we once we get past our skills interview and we know at that point that there's a little bit stronger interest then there's a follow-up discussion with the candidate to talk in a little bit more detail the way that I approach it and Jen you could speak to this as well I share with them how our compensation and total rewards are structured which usually opens candidates up to talking a little bit more about their total compensation and then at that point we know if you know we're we're on the same page so you don't want to I I think it's really important to make sure that recruiter organizations of are hearing that you're mostly focused on the opportunity the opportunity the role of the career opportunity as opposed to the compensation not that that's not important perfect great advice yeah they want to be excited about the work that they're going to be doing with a company like Accenture and based on that you know that that's really going to drive the conversation forward yep I have a thought on that um I agree with what Michael just said very much you're in trouble if the first thing you're asking is what do I get paid um not a good place to start you're trying to figure out given the job description given what the opportunity is why are you interested in actually doing the work point one and the other thing is and what do you think you could add in value for what that is those are where that first conversation has to focus and either line up or you don't when you asked about compensation I don't have to ask Michael in that first conversation all I have to say to him is I read the job description you know um you've seen my uh resume my question is you could ask a different question you could say I'm trying to understand my fit for this job description and the simple thing is do you see this Michael is it really a junior role is this a mid-level role or a senior role that's all I have to say I'm trying to line up me against the requirements that he understands for that job in that department now what happens is without bringing up numbers at all I can go out to many other places on the web and find out what the ranges are for junior mid and senior and I should already know that ahead of time for those roles so when he says jam it's really a mid-level project owner role I'll say okay um I know roughly what that is I don't have to know exactly I just know ballpark I'm in this range and either that is where I want to be and I can move forward in the process or I'd say no that's way you know I'm looking for a more senior role I don't need to talk about money I just say okay you told me it's an entry-level project manager role and I'm looking for a senior role so I know we're not lined up on the compensation and that's fine and then in Michael probably would say to me well this isn't that role you know I'd welcome you to apply for other ones that are maybe more senior that's exactly right you okay perfect Jennifer any other thoughts around the compensation piece and when to bring it up or how that's positioned from the candidate's perspective I think those were all very good points definitely showing the motivation for the role and being interested is more important up front in the conversations around compensation can come later perfect I think another thing I want to highlight from the chat is also additional resources beyond just LinkedIn and a lot of the developers you know what their work is and get a hub or get lab or even you know I'm looking at Hyperledger here their activities within you know pull requests or contributions to the Hyperledger ecosystem so what are your thoughts around you know as a recruiter going and taking a look at some of the actual work that's out there on the public sites sure I think those I think it's important a lot do you highlight those on their resume where those may come into play is is more your next level interview with the member of the hiring team perfect so it's good to have those referenced or even during a discussion maybe share what those are and invite them to go look yeah that's great Jennifer Michael you have any other thoughts around you know those additional technical resources where somebody can point to work that's on the public access portion of their work I think Jen was exactly right a little bit on the resume and definitely to highlight and share those examples when they're in the next interview with some of our business leaders okay perfect all right and then the other thing is you know just from your perspective and I know Jim really did a great job of saying you know be prepared here maybe only have a two-minute response when you know someone from Accenture HR asks a question so do you have any kind of sample screening questions that the that the people attending the session might want to be prepared for sure I can I can you know from my my point of view as an initial conversation it's generally around what they may know about Accenture why are they interested in Accenture why are they why are you interested in this particular position so those are are some of the main questions I would focus on during an initial screen along with their background and experience okay maybe also a little give some thought as to how this this role leads into the next three to five years of your experience of your career going forward like have you thought going forward how this aligns with that the goals that you have for your career progression yeah that's a great point Michael career progression is you know yeah you're going to be entering Accenture at this level in this role but as you talked about earlier you know that's not going to be your entire career at Accenture and so where does a candidate see themselves going in that three to five year time frame yeah perfect in the final interview of our process we have one of our mat we usually have one of our managing directors speak with each of the candidates that's one of the things that they're looking for great it's one of the things that we were looking for from our candidates that they've thought through that perfect Jim any other thoughts around that career development idea that Michael talked about there absolutely because I've been on the other end of that so I've been the hiring manager in our companies in the IT space as like the equivalent of a CIO for you know a small conglomerate nothing on the size of Accenture and when you go to a place like Accenture they're so well organized I'll say maybe I'm really but I'll say the companies are to be fair not just Accenture they have a really well-worked process for everything and what that means is you come into that process exactly like Michael said you know the is you come in there and it's a big company with lots of opportunities so you're coming into this one team into one job maybe that you're targeted for but these big companies have so many options to move around that you can have that nice discussion easily with either somebody in HR or you know as he says a managing director or director that you're working for usually the easy ways if you're talking to a hiring manager and you've gotten that far in the process you can just say hey you know one question I have is you know tell me about your journey here at Accenture how did that work out and you've been you might even look at somebody like me and say well you're really old so you've got places tell me about you know how how did you arrive at where you arrived at and that'll give you the idea they can easily paint the landscape and I've just talked to a company today where I heard the manager of data operations started as a data entry clerk a million years ago but what happened was it would the company kept growing just like Accenture does and the companies were all over the place so he kept keep realizing the companies right divisions get put together they build new divisions all and there was tons of opportunity when I was managing IT for smaller companies I didn't have that I knew that I'd already worked at IBM so I knew in a sense how big that landscape was but what I did in my interviews is I would talk to a candidate and say look here's the deal I'm not IBM I'm not you know Accenture I'm not Google I'm not somebody like that I'm a small IT shop so what I would say is when you're hiring in and you're looking at the role between you and I we should be able to share enough information honestly on both parts that you should look at the role and say you know what I'm positive I've done my due diligence and this role is going to fit what I want to do for the next at least two to three years and I would turn around the other way and say as a hiring manager if I don't see you staying in the role for two to three years that I'm hiring you for then one or both of us has failed process and so I used to and I said we both need to become the thing that happened the first place first larger place I worked as an IT director I wound up I can't remember how many people I hired but I'll say there were like two dozen people I hired into this one group and out of the two dozen people one retired one enjoyed life enough that they didn't want to have a career promotion they were just saying I don't want to do anything else but the other 22 out of 24 all got promoted uh curated from any to become director somewhere else and that was a one of the coolest things that on a check mark for me is saying hey I felt great about the fact that I was able to help these people graduate from I'll call it you know it wasn't jimmy university but it was I'll call company university and just like colleges have alumni the way I looked at them is I told them I said you know if things go well even if I don't have the right opportunity for you here I will help you find the right opportunity elsewhere that's the process I want to have and that alumni concept actually worked out great as an example in companies that do it well so if you're not Accenture go to a company but still ask the same thing talk about a career path they should still have a good answer for you even if they're not Accenture Perfect yeah great insight Jim uh so the other one I want to look at is let's just say they have a great experience Jennifer and Michael going through the process with you and you see that they're a qualified candidate and you're ready to now pass them along to the hiring manager or line manager for follow-up interviews so maybe can you give our attendees a little bit of insight as to how that process works and what they're going to be looking for Jennifer I'm going to start with you okay sure Michael touched on it a little bit where generally the process after having a meeting with the recruiters you would go to a skills interview with a member of the hiring team and having a successful interview during that process then you would move more to a manager director type interview where you have a chance to meet with a leader more senior leader of the team and really not only talk about your background experience but also have a chance to talk about the culture what you may be looking for in the future and have more in-depth conversation with a leader in that group that would be more different than kind of more of a technical interview you may have had before so it's it may be a little more broad in terms of what you may be looking for in the future but also a chance for you to ask questions of a senior member of the team within that organization about Accenture assessing culture assessing fit for you just as much as Accenture is looking at fit for Accenture perfect Michael you have any additional thoughts about kind of the hiring manager interview process no that's I think Jen described our process very well yeah and I think it's a pretty it's a process that seems to work pretty well for us where the candidate gets an opportunity to speak to their experience throughout the process to learn more about our organization to share why they're a match for Accenture and Accenture also has an opportunity to share with the candidate why this is the right place to develop their career further and like that last interview with one of our managing directors it's mostly focused on as Jen was sharing you know is this the right match you know let me tell you about is this the right culture the right environment what you're looking for all of that I think it's a good we found it to be a pretty good process so yeah perfect and I've got a follow on for the Accenture team here which really comes from the chat and so kind of two questions here Jennifer I'm going to start with you is any suggestion for someone re-entering the workforce after many years and then also is there an Accenture alumni recruitment process looks like there's Charles here that is an Accenture alumni so maybe talk about you know kind of re-entry into the workforce with with that question I think in in terms of your resume and presentation or in talking with a recruiter just be prepared to explain why what you're looking for and what experience you have within your your experience it's a fit for this particular role so I think in having that dialogue sharing why you're looking for this particular position and why why you're a fit okay perfect any other thoughts Michael around re-entering or alumni I'll mention the alumni point in just a second if I could sure and I think Jen answered the other question I think which was right on which was perfect answer so I wanted to mention another part of our process and I think that this is this is important to know as we're going each interviewer in the process plays a part in that they they get back to the recruiter on okay this is where I think the candidate is from a level perspective experience perspective and throughout and then at each of those steps through our process the recruiter our recruiters are checking re-checking setting you know resetting expectations with the candidate making sure there is alignment so that we don't get to the end of the process and all of a sudden there's a mismatch between you know the candidates skills and experience what they're looking for and what the role is so there's a constant back and forth as we go through that process that's another piece to about alumni so we love when alumni come back to Accenture we know that you've experienced our our environment and our culture and everything and it's you know there are prior there are a number of candidate types like referrals and alumni and diverse candidates that were you know that are absolute priorities for us as we look at candidates alumni we love when they come back to Accenture we have an entire recruiting team that focuses on that you know if you reach out to me on LinkedIn I'm not sure who asked the question but you Charles asked the question yeah okay if you reach out to me on LinkedIn with that question I'll get you more details like a link and maybe a contact within our alumni team that could hopefully help you perfect okay let me see if there's any other another question that was posed to me directly was are there any specific certifications that you're looking at as far as you know I know both of you come from the you know the blockchain recruitment team is there any specific certifications that are more valuable from a recruiting standpoint if you're looking at a technical candidate that you'd want to see on their resume and Jim I'll also open it up to you too but go ahead Jennifer go ahead and go first Michael were you gonna yeah okay Michael go Michael go for it do you have a great answer let's hear your great answer I don't know if it's a great answer actually it's it's probably gonna be pretty vague unfortunately I think the business okay so in the in the years that I've been focused on our blockchain recruiting I haven't heard a significant focus on certifications I'd like to make that a follow-up question that I could maybe share with the group that you can keep in mind if we could communicate it in some way I'll take that as a follow-up by to check with our business okay that'd be wonderful yeah so anybody who is concerned about that I think it was uh Nigel had reached out to me about that so feel free to reach out to Michael directly on LinkedIn and follow up on that question if you'd like yeah I do have a thought on that on the certifications piece sure certain roles have I'll call it well known industry certifications as an example I have a project management certification but mine is not a PMP right so mine which comes from the PMI Institute so there's a difference sometimes in certifications in terms of how well they're recognized so people who don't know a lot I've actually had to tell a recruiter they'll say oh you have a PMP I said no no no I have a project management certification from a different organization where that's a well known certification and so I'll honestly say no it's more like an equivalent of an associate's degree as opposed to a bachelor's right so there are differences in more mature disciplines blockchain isn't like that and as a result it's it's disappointing in some ways that we don't have better quality certifications they're honestly all over the map so anybody can create a certification and the quality of those varies all over the place the best I think it can say about you is you made the effort to go get certified in something in blockchain if I had a certification on solidity it's not going to be enough for a team looking for a solidity developer to say well then you're the guy that'll have a small influence what would really matter and I think there was a somebody made the point in the chat is when I'm interviewing with the people who are in a sense looking at my skill sets specifically in the interview process I'm going to have to convince them that I meet the needs they're looking for for that role for sure and part of that is an example might be saying well I can tell the story about me working on the giving chain I'm pretending here Bobby just go with me right so I can say I worked on the giving chain and I was the guy that put together firefly and some other pieces and integrated them all you know with db2 or something crazy and I can talk to that kind of thing that might be very relevant to the job I'm going into might be very useful the fact that I was certified as a hyper ledger fabric developer and areas developer shows interest on my end and effort which is good but unless they actually know what that certification is worth and what the test is it's not going to mean a lot as much as me talking directly to the experience that's relevant for what they're looking for with the right people it's good to see you were paying attention Jim everyone always pays attention to you Bobby you do great work so here's a good interesting question from Claudia kind of talking more in the networking vein here again so she says that she was coached to find people that work for the company already to see about maybe setting up an infer informal interview and engaging with the process that way and wanted to see if that would be a recommendation that you would have so Jennifer I guess I'll ask that question you know if this person knew someone with an in excensure how would that work compared to just going right into HR well if it's strictly networking then it's it's really more about making a contact and maybe having a conversation about what that particular person does if it's a role that somebody is hiring for it just probably would end up getting routed our direction anyway just to go through the application process but if it's more just strictly networking you know I think making contacts within an organization in a role that that you're interested in just to see if they are open to be a networker or be a mentor to you I think is is you know a great idea okay Michael any other thoughts around you know knowing an existing person within Accenture and then you know talking to them and seeing if it might be a good fit for an interview and going through the HR process then I think that that's exactly what you should be doing that is networking that's that's expected and then you know it could more than likely would probably lead to you know that person referring you to the recruiting team potentially so yes that's that's what networking is all about any context that you know within the organization that's the way to do it okay perfect Jim any other thoughts from your perspective as far as knowing internal resources and then you know leveraging that as far as being able to interview for a position I have to just agree with what Jen and Michael both said that it absolutely is the best thing the only maybe caution I would say is if I'm let's pretend I'm going back to IBM or going to a new company they're at Google and I've never worked there and John worked there I know John's an alumni of Google so I go to John and I'll say hey I'm thinking about an architect role at Google in their machine learning department I'm interested in that area I've had some experience and I and they seem to have a lot of jobs you know can you give me some feedback on what you think about working in that space at Google John if he has that experience is going to start sharing things with me the thing I need to ask John is can you tell me about what you think about working for Google in a sense he's painting a picture with a set of paints on his experience as well it's he's probably not going to take an independent view like a recruiter would of here's the opportunity here's the good the bad whatever it's probably a more personalized one which is really valuable in many ways but I do have to be careful if John didn't have a great experience and he left Google and then moved on to something else you know maybe he's a lawyer now whatever he does the answer is I have to be I have to understand how John sees Google not just the feedback I'm getting about maybe that opportunity so sometimes you know I'll say every company has people that left happy and people that left unhappy and honestly I can tell you you know there are companies I could pick in my own history that you wouldn't want to ask me about because or at least I'd be more careful about giving you feedback on them because I didn't have a good experience for those companies and you have to say well and even though I try to be less biased I'll say well you know I didn't have a great experience but that really had more to do with the manager than it had to do with the quality of the company the company might be a great company I just didn't have a good experience with managers working with so you do have to try to understand a little bit about that context for what it's worth okay perfect the other question I want to go to now is really about the offer process so let's just say that we have a candidate that came in they passed the initial HR screening process the hiring manager is now interested in bringing them on to the team so maybe can you walk us through how that offer process works and I'm going to go back to Jennifer and maybe you can touch base and tell us how that works at Accenture. Sure so after going through the interview process successfully and understanding that hiring managers has a candidate they want to make a hire then generally having a follow-up conversation with the candidate in terms of their interest in the role what they may be looking for what their requirements may be and then really based on the experience and and how the Accenture team has suggested leveling the candidate in terms of experience and we would come up with the competitive offer to present to the candidate generally we go through that verbally and get a verbal accept and then provide a written offer to them after that verbal acceptance okay and then once the candidate accepts the offer then how would that onboarding process work and maybe Michael you can talk a little bit more about onboarding process once the offer is accepted by the candidate. Sure so then we the next step in our process we normally initiate a background check we have an additional team that's we refer to as our career launch team that helps us in the onboarding of our new joiners of our new employees and that you know that process usually takes quite a few weeks all of our candidates have to give notice and all of that so when they're going through the background check there might might be non-competes or non-disclosure agreements that we're reviewing and checking on and things like that and we're also making sure that they're fully enabled in our system so that it's a really good experience when they start with Accenture and there's a when when they do there's a welcome a ton of wealth of information that goes out where we're connecting them to what we refer to as a people lead or it's it's kind of like a career counselor or the manager with an Accenture the person that's go more in most cases it's the person that they report to here at Accenture and that will be directly focused on their development and you know with an Accenture and their career and then the first two and a half days here at Accenture are spent in what we call a new joint orientation it's a very we have a very large organization so there's there's a lot to learn about us and how to kind of navigate all that so that that helps and then during those first two and a half days all of our employees start on a Wednesday and it's like Wednesday through the middle of the day on middle of the day on Friday usually their talent their people lead their direct report and their HR person probably reach out to them and start talking about different projects that they may be considering them for and just like beginning to assimilate them into our organization perfect yeah sounds like a wonderful process and you know really getting them prepared to get engaged with the company and build their career for sure Jim you have any other points about the absolutely my big point on this one I definitely need to send Michael my resume the very part is he the process he went through is good and I've been in other larger organizations and to be fair every large organization has aspirations about getting right what Michael just talked about but it's not simple honestly and one company is very different than another in the process and how well they're able to achieve those kind of goals but the concept of saying you're partnered up I'll say probably most likely at Accenture I'm guessing but there's a quote this quote beginning group of new hires and you're probably participating in that track but at the same time he said they were assigning you a career guidance counselor which is pretty cool idea most companies are also going to give you somebody right off the team that says I'm joining this architecture team for enterprise architecture and I'm going to buddy you up with Jen who is going to be the first person I want you to talk to she's a senior architect on that team and you know she'll help provide you some feedback guide kind of a thing so you wind up getting somebody like Jen who is really your work buddy initially to give you some guidance then you in his case you also have a guidance counselor to ask a lot of other questions that are not related to the specific stuff you're working on and the third thing is you're in a pool with usually staff a variety of mix of both HR and maybe some line stuff trying to give you feedback and the other and I'll ask this and Michael and Jen but I'll say big companies usually do a more thorough job than the companies I've been in you get the offer you like working with me so you're excited by that you might have met my manager and you had a good interview with him that's all good stuff usually big companies are going to go a little farther in trying to get you to understand the culture you're moving into and so they'll say hey you know here's all these other resources we want you to go through this checklist and spend some time up front so you can say ooh I understand more about the company where it came from what's valuable to them how they work with people there's so many other things so smaller companies will say hey you got to talk to Jim you got to talk to Jim's manager and hopefully you got all the right questions answered but in these other larger companies they really work hard upload lately anyway I can't say they did that 30 years ago but certainly today they worked very hard to give you a much better picture of in a sense where the companies come from where it's headed and what the value system is what the culture is try to answer all those kind of questions and then again you have your guidance counselor you probably have your team buddy if you will who's taking care of you as well so there's you know I'll make this up and say it doesn't look like there's as much confusion starting out in a more organized process like that okay perfect I think the only other question that was on my list that we really didn't touch face on was let's just say you have a very solid candidate and they passed HR screening just as a good quality candidate but ultimately they just weren't a good fit for the role with the hiring manager so how would you you know what would you recommend to a candidate to respond where they ultimately weren't selected as the final candidate to move forward yet they were still a very good candidate as far as the perspective of you know their higher ability head extension so go ahead Michael yep I just think it's very important to keep perspective so it's it's an on it's an ongoing discussion I mean great if it leads to an opportunity but even if it doesn't lead to an opportunity that time it may lead to one in the future so try to maintain perspective and professionalism and continue the discussion with that recruit make sure it says you leave off where you're staying in touch with one another and you express your continued interest in Accenture as an example and that you you know you'd like to you know continue the discussion I think that's the best approach yeah I think that's exceptional advice Michael I'll agree with you 100 on that uh Jennifer any other thoughts on you know how to follow on if you're ultimately not the final candidate for the position I always share to remain positive even though you may not have been selected you had the opportunity to go through the process and it's a learning experience and something you could take and build on but just remain positive because as Michael said it could lead to something else in the future for you perfect great advice Jim anything you want to add to that as far as follow-up if you're not actually selected for the final role that you first applied for yeah it's an interesting thing I think and I don't know I'd like Jen and Michael to jump in on this one but I think what there's different types of responses company give companies will give you when you're not selected if I've had gotten past the HR call I've gone through some interviews so I was considered a viable candidate not just by HR but I had several interviews for this role and then eventually I didn't get the role okay so they did find they liked you better than me that's fine they picked the best candidate they could find but I knew they at least had enough interest in me to go through these interviews and maybe I thought the interviews went fairly well let's say at that point I think I've earned enough I'll call it to go back to Jen or Jen Jen or Michael and say hey tell me you know I really like the company obviously I wasn't selected for the senior architect role I was hoping for but you know I really like Accenture does it make sense for me to continue for some other roles did you have any thoughts on what might be appropriate to me I wouldn't have a problem calling either one of them up or reaching out on LinkedIn or whatever say that was my recruiter so on the other hand I'll say the tough thing is and I'll say again I'm not being fair to all small companies but on average a lot of little companies don't always have that luxury and they'll just send you a form letter and actually to be fair it's okay if Accenture sends me a form letter too and said hey we were looking for a first-class baker and we don't think anything on your resume lines up but we wish you the best of luck I expect to get that because I didn't line up at all and everything got through the interviewing process but if you and little companies a lot of times aren't as good on the follow-up I'll say so a lot of times you will go through the interviewing process and all you're going to get is a delay and no response after maybe the last interview and then three weeks later when they figure out the you know the other guy has already started you get the form letter kicking back saying hey you know Jim it was great knowing we wish you the best of your career and that's all you're going to get but again if you had I'll go to the deep interview process and you had what you thought were good relationships with the people you went through I would certainly encourage you to go back to talk to the HR person or at least reach out to them in an email if not just say hey look you really like the company like the process and all that and think of them more as a quarterback they have the opportunity to tell you well you know what if you weren't the best as a senior architect over here but you really had a strong background in programming they do have plenty of those roles they can redirect you and affect it for their opportunities perfect yeah great great insight from everyone today I really appreciate it I don't think that we have any other specific questions from the chat but what I'd like to do now is to turn it back over to Bobby and Bobby's really done a great job of dealing with all the different questions coming through chat and posting a lot about the resources at Hyperledger so Bobby if you can come off and get on video here and take the session back over that'd be great sure I just want to thank everybody that was so insightful and I hope it helped people who are looking for jobs make connections feel free to reach out to any of us the BC employee website will have links to this recording as well as the PowerPoint to get the live links and some of the events that are going on please join us for the December 2nd event where Accenture will have tables for different positions so that you'll be more fine tuned to where you want to go we're not really sure how they're going to divvy up those tables whether it's by project or by role or whatever but they'll let us know how they feel they want candidates to come in so please come with your questions for these companies about the jobs you want this is a really informal call it a free interview pass so you get to talk to the companies and they get to talk to you and it's very informal and then you know if you want to move forward with them so please join us for that event again the recording for this event will be on the BC employee website we are almost out of time so I'm just going to ask if anybody in the audience has any questions for the panel and now's you've got five minutes to ask them so go right ahead if you have any Bobby I think the one thing that was asked was if they could get the LinkedIn profile links for Jennifer Michael and Jim that'd be helpful sure I'll add them to the summary on the webpage so when I put the recording up there I'll put their links if you haven't grabbed them out of the chat and if they want to drop them in the chat now again and don't hesitate to go on all your social media and talk about how great this event is for clarifying your job search we would appreciate the coverage so any questions if not we do have the learning materials working group called John and I co-host that and if you're interested in learning about the hyperledger community at all that is like the call to join because we take newcomers through we teach you how to navigate the wiki page we talk about what opportunities you can jump on and we you know teach you how to do that so again join us for the job fair with Accenture on December 2nd and I hope to see you at the learning materials working group the information is on the hyperledger wiki page which is wiki.hyperledger.org and you can find all the information there so thank you John Jim and thank you Michael and this was an exciting event and Jennifer you're we're awesome thank you for everything and we'll see everyone on the second thank you for inviting us it was great thank you very much have a wonderful evening everyone I'm going to wrap the call up now thank you bye