 When I got laid off, the first thing that ran through my head was dub-dub TDD, what would Taylor Desson do? You're out here all the time, just talking about what's happening in the industry, like specifically our space, you know, like kind of technology and like web tech and all that stuff, and it's kind of funny because like, you know, I always see it, right? Like I see it, it's kind of like in the background, but then there's that moment where it's like, okay, now I gotta take this seriously. And it's like, you're the first person that pops into my head. So first of all, I just wanted to say, thanks for what you're doing. And then also just kind of like, my question is really like, what's next? But first, how are you doing? I'm really good. You're probably getting a lot of like exactly this, right? Yeah. What do I do, man? What do I do? Yeah, it's tremendous, which is why I'm glad you're doing this. I'm glad we're going live here in a few weeks. It's so interesting because you said, again, I watch your content, it's so well done. And I was just like, you were like, I'm actually excited because I get to document this in public. And I felt the same way in my job search because I actually felt that like, you can resonate with people more when you're going through the trend, like when you're going through it yourself. And so this is why I love content. You can like hold yourself more accountable because you're documenting it daily, right? Like I have a health journal right now with my nutritionist. I'm dialed the fucking right now, right? And then also too, you're going to help others too, which I'm so passionate about. And the fact that, I'm not going to lie, the fact you said what you said, you're like, what would Taylor do? Like you're the first, but like that's it for me. Like that's exactly where I want to be because we don't sell t-shirts at gun, right? Like we sell like the opportunity to maybe get you placed, maybe not. So I mean, like how hard is to place developers is that a typical developer lasted a company between 18 to 24 months, right? So let's just say on average, a buying cycle for us is a year and a half, two years, right? So that we have that against us already. Then on average, we only help 10% of the people we meet. Whoa, okay. Those are like Stanford numbers. Yeah, so out of every 10 developers we meet, we only place one. Wow, that's crazy. Has that gotten harder over like over the years? I'm sure that number is probably one out of 15 now or maybe even another one. Oh man, that's crazy. Like that's terrifying, honestly. Yeah, no, I know. Which is why like, and I'm glad we started this way because it's going to lead into some conversations. I think that's why I'm so passionate about people right now, like follow up, talk to as many fucking recruiters as you can. Like talk to as many other people as you can. Like leave no stone unturned right now. Like it was so funny, this story. My three-year-old daughter has a stuffy. It's called pink hop. Pink hop is my daughter's, like that thing is everywhere. That thing is driven over, like just, it's ridiculous. Hanging on my thread. And so the other night, she couldn't find it. And I was like, great, I was searching for it forever. That's a whole night. And then like I looked at her right before bed. I said, Ari, I said, I can't, dad can't find your pink hop. And she goes, oh, I know where it is. I was like, well where? She immediately went right under her bed. I looked at this sack. I looked at this pillowcase sack. It looked like there was nothing in there and there was something in there. And I think that that is a lot as it relates to the job search because for example, I found gun IO because I went to coffee with my biggest competitor as a recruiter. And I said, how is this guy gonna help me find a job? He recruits engineers. I'm not an engineer. And he was my biggest competitor. And look at this, I'm at gun IO now because of it. That's crazy. So you never know where it's gonna show up. You never know. Oh man. So this is kind of interesting. And this is maybe, I wanna talk about the content piece of it first because that is the thing that was, I was most impacted, right? Because like I think you do your daily videos, you're always showing clips of your talks, et cetera. I'm bad at that stuff. Like I just don't, like I haven't really done it. And so I knew that if I called you, you'd be like, you gotta put more content out there. You gotta tell people what you're about. You're so good too, man. It's so well done. I know it takes time. Don't get me wrong. I'm very blessed to have a team around me that can pump out videos. I'm not the one doing the video. So I understand it's a lot, but my advice to you, man, put it out. Don't try to be fancy right now. Yes, yeah. That's the big thing. Like you opening up your phone. Cause like when I think of Chan, I think of like your background right now, very well produced. And I wanna be honest with you, a good change of pace for you could be like just talking to the phone and putting it on Twitter. Okay, okay. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do it like, I trust your opinion. So I'm gonna do that for sure. Let's do it. I think it's, I always talk about with my content team. And then we're getting a little distracted here but I talk about it. So I'm a big college football fan. And like we always, so South, I went to South Carolina University of South Carolina. We've had some issues with our offense over the years. And they always talk about giving defenses different looks, right? Giving them like different formations, where are the receivers lining up? How many tight ends are you using? How many run back? You gotta give them different looks to keep them on their feet. So same thing with content. If people different looks, your look right now is really good. It's very polished. It sounds great. But man, I think right now, if you want to be really vulnerable. Gotta dirty it up a bit. Just open up your phone to start recording shit. Okay, I'm gonna do that. That'll be the next one. That'll be the next one. I'm gonna do it on my phone. You like walking your dog, like talking about your thought for the day, I think would be very impactful. That would be like a pretty big shift for me in terms of like vulnerability, like just personally. And so I think that this is kind of, this whole thing is kind of opening up this mindset for me that I think a lot of people have a problem with, especially in this very vulnerable time of like being laid off, is right immediately my mind goes to like, no, this is not the time to like, kind of like show my underbelly. I gotta like look as good as possible, right? And I'm already feeling like, you know, like if you get laid off and it's not like a head trip for you, like you might be a sociopath, I think, right? Like there's something that's gonna- It sucks. I mean, I was laid off. I was forced out, laid off, whatever I call it July of last year. And it was terrifying. It tweaks your brain, right? Cause you're like, I thought, I know I was doing good. My reviews were good. My reviews were good. I mean, if you want to be real for a second, I mean, it is trauma. There's a lot of emotions that go through it. One of my buddies who's a senior engineering manager, he just found a job and he did this long blog post. And I'm very grateful. He gave me a shout out. And he was like one of the best pieces of advice you ever said was breathe and take time for yourself when you get laid off. Because, I mean, it's very traumatic. And I'm being serious. Like, I mean, even if you got a severance, like, I mean, I was talking to one senior engineering manager last week. He said he and his wife were basically in tears for three weeks. He wasn't getting anything coming in and he was terrified. Now he's gotten a lot better and like he's got a lot more leads coming in but he still was just like, I was absolutely terrified. And so that's why I tell people like if you can, depending on your financial situation, if you got severance, I understand it all varies. But if you can afford to even just take a day, go to the movies, go watch Dune 2 in movies, right? Like give yourself a day, eat the junk food, just live in your sweats for the day. You went through something traumatic. Give yourself that day. Okay, and then let's get going. I remember a video where you were talking about how you just hit it, you used to tell people like hit it hard, like just go in every day. It's like your job or whatever. And then like when you went through it, you were like, it's exhausting. You can't. I was like, the job search is nine hours a day. You need to be on your computer and talking to people nine hours a day. And now I'm like, fuck, if I could get to like two hours of just networking on social and maybe some interviews, I've had a good day. And that's helpful, I think. Because a lot of people do, I think there's that idea of like, oh, I gotta grind. Like I gotta make this work and staying loose and limber and flexible, like really is like maybe more important to like be able to like see all the connections instead of just like, you know, forcing it through. But I'm curious like, you know, from your perspective, like I'm thinking, you know, Taylor would say, do some content and what I'm going through right now is something that kind of maybe possibly could make me come across as worse than I want to be perceived when like trying to apply for a job, right? Like I wanna look like the biggest badass that like ever badass, right? How do you resolve that? Like, you know, you personally are like, if you're recommending, you know, this strategy to people, how do you resolve that? Or like, what's the piece that makes it click? I tell myself a few things. They're not nice things, but it gets me to post. So your question was what can get people to post? So when I was younger and in my last company, I would always stress out, am I getting fired? Like, what did I do wrong? You know, your boss, cause, hey, you got a man like, well, fuck what did I do? I'll just pack my box right now, I'm good. Yeah, he finally looked at me. He finally looked at me and goes, you're not that important. Ooh, now, now, that seems very harsh, right? But there's a lot of validity to that in that it's not about you all the time. It's not about you. It's the same thing with content. Nobody cares. Yeah, yeah. Like I've, here's the deal. I have seen people produce really bad content and people still root for them. Yeah, okay. Because people still just genuinely wanna root for, I think especially right now, one of the things I've seen more than anything else is people just genuinely wanna help other people right now. Like you're, I got laid off video, got like 300,000 impressions or something. It was absolutely insane. It was stupid. I went back and looked at it, right? Like absolutely insane. Now, granted, you've developed a hell of a following, but the thing is though, is that, that got some juice though. Like that got more juice than I think than usual. And that's just because people love you. People wanna help people right now. They just genuinely do. And I think my thing is, is like, if you putting yourself out there gives you, I talk about at bats, right? I'm not a baseball guy. I'm a baseball guy when it comes to college baseball because South Carolina baseball is kind of good. I don't know, we lost the Clemson this week. I wanna talk about our biggest insane rivals, but you can get in the hall of fame by batting 250, which means I'm not that smart, but you miss three out of the four times you're at bat. Yes, yeah. And you still get in the hall of fame. So it's like for us, like we kind of gotta view ourselves as baseball or softball players in that you just need at bats. As long as you're getting the at bats, as long as you're consistently stepping up, even if you're like tip, foul ball and everything and finally striking out, you just can't, but the fact of the matter is you're still getting up and you're still getting at bats. And I think with me, I think content, I said this in my talk at that conference in January, I said content is first round interviewing at scale. Wow, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's true. Cause what's the first round? Tell me about yourself, biggest strength, biggest weaknesses, what you've been up to, what do you do, what have you done? All that shit you talk about in content. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So literally content creation is getting the at bats at scale or first round interviewing at scale, whatever term you wanna say. If I understand correctly, this is like, hey, you put this stuff out there and you're already answering that question. There's like a higher likelihood that the next person that's gonna hire you has clicked that video already than like is gonna see your like one of a hundred resume. Yeah, well, people also too are really concerned about what I call bottom of the funnel when it comes to marketing and I'm not gonna get into the nuances of it. I need my own blog site or I need my own portfolio site. No, you need to put out stuff out there that's gonna be seen to the masses. That's not gonna be seen to the masses. What's seen to the masses is a tweet, is a video on LinkedIn, right? Those are the things that are seen at the masses, not you posting a blog on why you like tailwind on a site that has no traffic. That's not gonna get you anywhere. Yeah, now do you think that that is, would you say that content in this way is kind of a differentiator or like one of the big differentiators in terms of placement right now? I have had more people find jobs because of content than anything else. That's crazy. That's crazy. I still get people go, I mean, I don't know, it just depends. I mean, you could argue and be like, well, Taylor, you didn't find a job with content because you went to lunch with that guy. Yeah, I get that, but that also came from me being very active and started a recruiter meetup in Nashville. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yes, that's not content, it's community though. And to me, they all kind of work hand in hand, which is why my new talk is why content and community can leverage your career. I love that. Is that what you gave that conference or is that coming out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Send me a link to that and we'll put it in. So I guess one of the things is like, I have only ever experienced the kind of like in-house recruiter at like a, like in terms of like a job search at a place that I'm interviewing at. And so a lot of times it's kind of like they're like ushering me through the process or like telling me what to expect and whatnot. What does it look like to kind of like work with a recruiter or like employee recruiter? Cause I know like for me, it's like I'm that developer mindset. It's just like, I'll do it myself. Thank you very much. Like I don't need anybody's help. But like, I mean, I probably do. So like, what does that look like? What are the, how do you set people's mind at ease when they're kind of engaging in this new type of relationship? Yeah. So there's two types of recruiter. There's internal recruiter and agency recruiters, right? So I think in my opinion, I think right now in this market, I mean, you can reach out to internal recruiters if you want to. When I say internal recruiters, it's like the recruiters that work at Amazon and the recruiters that work at Netflix, right? It's like internal recruiters at the company. In my opinion, it's fine reaching out to those folks, but like their job isn't to really remember you. And I don't mean to be mean. Yeah. Internal recruiters, that's just not the responsibility. Agency recruiters are responsible for that, right? Like people don't realize like my entire job as an agency recruiter was to meet 15 people a week for 12 years. That's a lot of people do. Not to mention meetups, conferences. That's not even counting conferences and meetups and other events that I went to. That is just pure grinding every single day a week. It's probably more now, right? Like, I mean, it's more people, right? I mean, I probably, I mean, like Twitter followers, it does have 12,000, which I mean, it's not a lot compared to other people, but like I think if I'd probably have my Rolodex per se, I think I'm probably at like 25,000 developers, I know. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. So all that being said, agency recruiters is who you need to meet because they are like, because they are highly commissioned, low base, and they want to get you a job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so now a lot of people are like, well, recruiters never get back to me. That's fine. Here are four questions, three or four. I don't know, hold on, give me a second. Here are three or four questions to ask a recruiter to level up your job search without ever them helping you find a job. One, how does my resume look? Like, what would you change? Well, it's one thing you would change. If you talk to 10 recruiters and they give you one tangible piece of advice, you'd have a whole new resume, you won't have to pay for a resume writer. The second thing is same kind of question, same vein, ask a recruiter, hey, how can my LinkedIn be better? Give me one tangible piece of advice for LinkedIn. Third question, how does my salary and skill sets align with what you're seeing in the market right now? Is my salary too high? Is my salary too low based off the skills? And then the fourth question I would ask is, if I'm lacking anywhere just in my background right now, what's one skill I should try to upskill right now? I love that. I love that. Those are like four or five questions. You can ask a recruiter every time you get on the phone with them, even if they can't help you find a job. Because again, recruiters only place 10% of the people they meet. That's why I started creating content. Because out of every 10 developers I meet a week, I can only place one developer. So how am I taking care of the other nine developers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I even started to touch on that a little bit where it's like, oh, I'm gonna be fielding a ton of questions about this. Like, I might as well just put them into videos and then just be able to answer them with a link. So I started guidance counselor 2.0 because when I moved to Nashville to find a job, I did not know how to find a job. Yeah. And I created an ecosystem that younger Taylor would want to be at. I love that. Partaken. Well, hey, I want to let you go. But hey, thanks so much. Tell me your socials so that people can find you right away. Yeah, absolutely. Just go to gun.io backslash. Taylor, I want to plug gun for a second. I ended up there after my last company where Talent Marketplace, again, unfortunately, we're at the control of the hiring managers that call us. You have to at least have five years of engineering experience to get on the platform. And it's one of those where you just set up your profile and you forget it and we'll reach out. If we have something, it's kind of like working with a recruiter, but you're always in our database now and we won't forget you because you're in a database that we developed because we have an engineering team. So highly recommend checking that out. And then all my social medias is at tdescent, T-D-E-S-S-E-Y-N. Thank you for everything you shared today. Thanks for doing what you're doing. And then just inspiring us to share what we're going through. I mean, that's the only reason I'm doing this is because I was, I mean, again, WDTDD. I got to get the two D's in there. There's a nice little symmetry there. Well, WDTD, but it's Dessen, too. So I actually still check out. TDD, not to confuse or test driven development. Hey, thanks so much. I can't wait to be on Guidance Counselor again. It's going to be awesome. So yeah, hey, thanks so much. I'll see you later. Absolutely, brother.