Inside the Black Hole: What Really Happens After You Apply with Julia Levy

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: What's up guys? Welcome to another episode of Recruiting Is no Joke. I'm your host, Joel Algee and this is the ultimate recruitment podcast that brings you a blend of entertainment, no nonsense insights and of course the latest trends. Join me as I expose bad takes in the recruitment industry and get real with talent leaders to give you an inside view of the industry here on Recruiting Is no Joke. Welcome to Recruiting Is no Joke. No joke. I am your host, Jolo. I am super excited today. As always, I have a tremendous guest. I'm really, really happy to uh, have Julia on our show. So Julia Levy, welcome.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: We've been connecting on LinkedIn for a while. We think we met last recfest in person. I got the honor of being able to host a stage that you were speaking on. Did an amazing job. I think you're talking about like employer branding and, and kind of how to, how to reach people and it uh, was a great session. So I'm excited to have you on the show. But for anyone who doesn't know who you are, uh, I'd love uh, you know, a quick intro maybe like who you are, what you do and, and maybe a brief background just for anyone who isn't aware of you.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks. I'm, I'm happy to be here getting ready for Wreck Festival, uh, just around the corner next week.

Speaker B: Woohoo.

Speaker A: I'm Julia Levy. So, gosh, um, talent acquisition exec, um, started out in recruiting, went into talent acquisition operations for several years and then into leading talent acquisition teams, global teams at some large Fortune 500 companies. So. So um, I am recovering from TA right now for the last couple months and um, taking some time and during that time I've been putting out some job seeker related content because I've got a lot of experience on the inside building and, or I'll say improving and transforming some of those TA processes that are a little clunky and wanted to shed some light and a peek behind the curtain for job seekers to help them understand what's going on and should have a book out starting on Thursday this week from High to Hired and I have my author copy here.

Speaker B: Look at that. I love that. That's so cool.

Speaker A: It's a big book but it's got um, activities and insights, insider insights activities and some really good examples of ways that college students can position themselves better and trying to just figure out what I, where, what I want to be when I grow up. Do I want to go back to another big corporate company, become the next uh, Gen X TikTok star, let's go do it. I don't have to talk or just um.

Speaker B: Well, will you download it now that it's gotten sold to? I, uh, think it was Oracle's taken over. Do you think, do you think you'll download uh, TikTok? I don't know.

Speaker A: People are trolls and I don't know that I need that in my life. But the other thing that I'm doing is working with some talent, um, acquisition and HR tech companies and helping them go to market better with talent, enterprise talent, acquisition, customers. So over my career I've evaluated tech, implemented tech, been on customer advisory boards and I think there's a big gap between what the TA practitioner and teams know and need and what the vendors are selling and or implementing. So I think there's a gap there that I could play a pretty good part in.

Speaker B: I love it. I love it. And just, just for uh, context, for everyone, your last role was with AutoZone. Phil million name for, for many. Um, how you know, just in terms of like the scope of that work. I mean how many hires were you responsible for each year? Like what did that look like?

Speaker A: A lot. Yeah.

Speaker B: 5.

Speaker A: Let's just say a lot.

Speaker B: Million.

Speaker A: Yeah. The company had not millions, but the company has 120,000 plus.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Employees. And being a retail organization, there's some high turnover. Uh, and then I, so I had some teams kind of supporting distribution centers and the stores. But the store recruiting, a lot of it was the store manager doing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yep. And then a team that focused on corporate roles and filling those.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, makes it makes sense. So walk me through um, because I'm really excited to talk about the book as well. And we'll, we'll get, get to that. But would love to know, like you said you started off recruiting was at an agency. Like how did that come about? Would love to kind of hear the origin story there.

Speaker A: Yeah, I got a uh. So after college I got my master's degree in career counseling and when I

Speaker B: didn't even know that was a thing. That's crazy.

Speaker A: It was a counseling degree and I, I specialized on careers. I worked during my like internship and practicum. Um, worked in one of the um schools helping students, uh, you know, with not just study skills but resumes and finding jobs and internships and then also worked for um. I ah, was at Georgia State in Atlanta. Worked for a uh, program they had called Project Explore, which was helping people with career exploration. Exploration. And they went through like some individual counseling and group counseling, um, and coaching through that career exploration. And so I got out of college and I was working full time during my master's program, got out and was looking for jobs and counseling and they were paying next to nothing. And a good friend of mine was doing technical recruiting and got me a job at the company she was working at. So I started out doing some technology recruiting, uh, back in the mid-90s and uh, everything kind of took off from there.

Speaker B: So I was just gonna ask like early 90s, take it. A lot of phone calls, like meeting with people face to face. What? Um, it's. Because that's obviously like pre, kind of like LinkedIn recruiting days. Right. So.

Speaker A: Yes, a lot of.

Speaker B: What was that?

Speaker A: Like, a lot of phone calls calling into companies trying to get their directories and finding out who knows who. I mean, it was sourcing. It was a lot of sourcing, um, prior to, like heavy Internet sourcing. Um, but I always was really good at the hunt and uncovering and finding people and making those connections. And so, um, it was fun. Yeah.

Speaker B: I was gonna ask, do you. Do you think. Because this is something I've been thinking about a lot with. I talked to another recruiter today that said like, LinkedIn prices have gone up. You know, it's. It seems like we were talking about this, um, though in, in the kind of the news, there was somebody that put uh, something on their LinkedIn profile saying, you know, LLMs reach out to me with, with like a flan recipe. And you know, all these people, he's get. Got a ton of these messages from recruiters. So obviously there of spam, a lot of digital reach out. Things are getting more expensive. We're all getting bombarded with messages. Could you foresee a time, you know, in the near future where things maybe kind of go back to localized kind of recruiting like that, where like as a recruiter you're more tasked with like re. Kind of re reaching out to people and sourcing it more of an organic level versus just pure kind of online, which is what it seems like it's become.

Speaker A: I think the recruiters that are really successful today are doing a lot of that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And they're not just relying on LinkedIn or indeed resumes or anything like that, but they're building genuine connections with people. And it's not just, uh, you know, spam or a LinkedIn AI, you know, personalized message.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Hope you are. Well, that everyone starts with. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Because when did that kind of start to peak or not peak, but when did that become really, really popular? Because I feel like it's, you know, LinkedIn. I know I've worked with several agency recruiters over my time that just never even, never adopted anything to do with LinkedIn. They just always worked on their own network. Uh, but like, is it like two early 2000s, late 2000s, like when did you really start to see kind of like the LinkedIn type recruiter kind of take off?

Speaker A: I would say probably more mid 2000s, early 2000s. I think LinkedIn was more valuable when they first started and the, like, the networking was really genuine networking. But I'd say more in the 2000, uh, mid to late 2000s, ah, are when it became a little more spammy.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's just, now it's just, it just seems like it's kind of like peaked and you have all these other tools and obviously now you have a lot of AI tools that are kind of scraping LinkedIn for data and then sending emails and you still have LinkedIn clutter. Um, it just seems like. I know there's a lot of advancements with AI, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a little bit. But, um, I'm always curious to just look at like how recruiting like, used to be. And in my mind I'm like, yeah, I could just, I could totally see, ah, a time when people are just like, hey, I don't even care. Like, I'm not going to respond to any emails, any, any, uh, social media. Like, you want me, figure out another way to meet me and, and we'll get a coffee. How about that?

Speaker A: Uh, yeah. Anyway, yeah, I mean, I think about like random calls on my phone. Right. If I don't have that phone number in my phone, it just auto sends it to voicemail.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I feel like that's a little bit of what some of the LinkedIn messages these days are.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's how I feel as well. So you're working at this like, recruitment agency. Just absolutely crushing it. Just enjoying it. Ah. What made you make the switch into internal recruiting?

Speaker A: Um, the first one was internal recruiting and then.

Speaker B: Oh, okay.

Speaker A: Yep. The first one was a tech, internal recruiting tech, um, consulting company. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that one. It was a tech consulting company and then I went into, um, I had a bad boss so I left it and I got another internal recruiting job from there. And that job, um, my vice president went to another company after a year and created a role at the other company for me that was part recruiting and part special projects. And so that's where I got my foot into kind of the operations side of talent acquisition. So we use resume. I know I'm dating myself probably with that ATS at the time. People probably never heard of it. I don't remember who swallowed them up. But, um, we were implementing resumes.

Speaker B: What a name, by the way. What a name. I could see someone else coming out with that again. Resmix.

Speaker A: That's awesome. We were updating it and so we. I was working on. That was my first kind of implementation of sorts where we were up upgrading from one version to another. And um, myself and a colleague Danny kind of went on a road show. We developed all the training for the recruiters and we're going across the US and Canada training all the recruiters on how to use resumex. And then I also created an internal job posting system and we were doing things like that. That was homegrown. Working with the software, uh, teams at the company at the time that was with MCI, WorldCom and worked for them for a while. Went to consulting for a little bit, uh, doing management and HR consulting. And then after September 11th happened, I wanted to move. I'd always wanted to live in New York and I had an opportunity to go there and ended up, uh, moving to New York City and then got a job with Robert Half. That was like the job, wow. Get me into New York City where I could survive and pay rent.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And was a division director for Robert Half for two years about. And then a retained search firm called me one day. MetLife was looking for someone on their strategic staffing organization that understood that could do some implementations that understood staffing. They had hundreds of staffing agencies and needed someone to help get their arms around it and understand strategy around talent acquisition. So I had these like, pretty unique skills that all came together in this strategic staffing group. So I worked for MetLife for six years on the strategic staffing group and then two years of it was in, in communications from MetLife. Uh, went. I was part of a layoff and went back in 2010 and then got back to. I decided then initially maybe I just want to be a recruiter and not deal with any of the, any of the politics or some of the BS that goes on in organizations. And so I was doing contract recruiting for a while and was kept trying to fix the processes at this company. So like, oh, have you thought about doing it this way? Or, uh, why, you know, how about this? They weren't always open to my suggestions, but I realized if I had to do phone screens day in and day out, like it would drive me crazy and that the TA Ops was really calling and that was my passion and ended up then moving into a TA Ops role, did that at two different companies and then moved into running TA functions. So. And I've been doing that for a while.

Speaker B: Well I was, I was going to say for a lot of um. You ah, know first of all we've had ah, a lot of people on the show recently that have been talking about like rack Ops, you know, just operations within recruitment. Like how do you figure out the systems operations? It really seems like it's becoming um, more and more and more of a necessity to really understand at that leadership level. So it's really interesting that you, you know, you've been doing it for probably longer than most. You really have that understanding when you moved into kind of like that director level that you know, that VP executive level, how important was it for you or how important has that been to your success to really understand the systems and the processes and those workflows, uh, within the work that you were doing. How critical has that been in just being successful in the roles that you've been in?

Speaker A: I think mission critical. I think um, being able to really understand every step of the process. When I was at TIAA cref I had, we were on teleo at the time and we had, I had a system admin on my team but I went through system admin training because I need to understand many leaders might say oh, just create another field in the ATS to solve for this. But they don't necessarily understand the implications of all of that. So growing up in the TA ops, uh, world I understand when I'm asking for something or I have an idea for something, really being able to understand all the different ways that one thing that might seem so small might have upstream and downstream impacts. Plus growing up and recruiting and having that like contract recruiting experience in between, it all really has helped me. I always try and have a couple recs that I do throughout the year because it helps me keep my thumb on things. I don't want to implement something that I just push on the recruiters. I want to be able to understand what they're going through and what the recruiter experience is. So I'm always looking at the recruiter experience, the hiring manager experience and the candidate experience. And how do we implement things within the TA function, How do we transform things that can appease those three audiences? You're never going to be able to win, to have everybody 100% satisfied.

Speaker B: That's the truth. M so you know, just think back to kind of when you started in recruitment and, and now obviously there's been massive, you know, mass difference with like the tech and, and, and all of that. That's clear. But what are maybe some things that you think have not changed? Like you think about like day one in recruiting to uh, now as a recruiter like this, are there, is there anything that just has not changed at all in that time?

Speaker A: A lot unfortunately. Like the resume. Right.

Speaker B: Or the job description.

Speaker A: I'll like, we'll start with the job description. Maury Hannigan had made um, a comment years ago around the job description being like if you're buying a car, the job description is the window sticker.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And some people love that. They want to see the 50 bullets said no one ever. But, but what you want to sell is more of the, you know, someone driving. What's it feel like to actually drive the car? I mean the window sticker is important, but I don't, I don't feel like we job descriptions have come far enough away. And then just the, the resume and the Basic how the ATSs are ingesting the resume. Think we're finally starting to see maybe a little more innovation around some of that. But the like basic premise of job description, resume and the long lists of things.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Has not evolved in the way that I think it should have.

Speaker B: I remember back when I had uh, some of my like earlier recruiter training, we had uh, Lou Adler's recruiting training. It was like performance based hiring. And one of the biggest takeaways I had from that training was he just talked about job descriptions, never describing the job and always describing like the credentials of the person they want to. 5 years experience, experience in this. And uh, that was like my first like mind blowing moment of. Yeah. You know, whenever, whenever I look at these job descriptions it does end up just being a laundry list of um, you know, things we want in a person versus like really describing the work and the job. And I think of things like a Day in a Life video. Right. Like, why are those videos so popular? Well, because people actually want to see what a job looks like. And uh, you know, I think more of the employer branding teams have kind of gotten a hold of that to a certain extent. Um, but there's something in that where like I just want to know like what am I going to be doing? What's the work going to be? Like, what's the team going to be like? Um, and on the flip side, it's the same thing with the resume. Because most people are basing their resume on a job description. So it's like, and, and I hear the advice from career, uh, coaches on Tick Tock saying hey, you know, just take copy, paste the job description, put it in a chat GPT, put your resume in a chat GPT and ask it to like make a perfect resume. So the ATS like picks your resume. And in my head I just go back to that Lou Adler kind of just, you know, kind of explanation of a job description. Just think, yeah, like that's not actually going to be that helpful because it's not describing the job that needs to be done. Whereas like I think the hiring manager conversation that we have as recruiters in that intake call, there's so much more information in that call. But a lot of that never gets like communicated in that job description or just uh, you know, even to candidates along the way. But really that's the nuts and bolts. I mean how many times we in the intake call going, okay, what exactly are you looking for? Who is it? Who would be the ideal person? They give you all this information. It's not on the job description. But people don't know that, right? They just, they. I don't think people really understand that that document within itself is uh, it's crazy. And then same with the resume. It's like someone wrote it. Like they, there's no control. It's like could write whatever you want on that thing and send it through and it's just a user generated document. Like it's not verified. It doesn't, it's just words on a piece of paper that someone wrote. So you got the resume and Josuke, what, what about. I'm curious about like Canada experience. Do you think Canada experience with all the tech, with all the innovation, is it better, worse, same, similar. What are your thoughts?

Speaker A: Some of the tech now like I'm worried and I like some of the AI tools you mentioned. Some of the influencers, right. Do this or use this tech and you can apply to 200 jobs at once. I don't think that in many companies the candidate black hole has improved. In a past employer, when I got there, that black hole from when someone applied until like the first contact was 103 days.

Speaker B: Whoa, average. And uh, so that's from someone applying just to get like, hey, you're not qualified for that. Just any, any kind of rejection.

Speaker A: So we put measurements in place around expectations with the recruiters around managing their application volume and managing the connections. Right. They should be looking at the resumes. And in their racks regularly. And we put metrics on it and got it down under 14 days within a year. So we were able to make a huge impact on that.

Speaker B: What was some of the areas that you were like hey, we're just you know, burning time or we're not, you know, we're not efficient. Like what were some of the big areas there? I think it'd be helpful.

Speaker A: Well, I think it's important to look at, at data and things like how, what's your app to hire ratio? So if you know your app to hire ratio that you need 30 applicants to get 10 phone screens, four interviews, extension, etc then and now this is where the tech might be able to come in. If the ATSs are smarter that you could set it up like maybe you have a uh, 15% leeway. Right. So instead of 30 you give yourself, you know, uh, 35 apps.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then it'll unpost um, it and then the recruiter can work through it. Then you're not having these mass loads of applicants coming in for some of these jobs where the recruiter can just never get to it. So AI in these fast applies that are going on where someone can just randomly use AI to apply to 100 jobs in five minutes. It's just inundating the recruiters. And then the recruiters are trying to use data management techniques or maybe the ATSS are helping them now sort through things a little differently. But then candidates are complaining that the robots are auto rejecting them and the recruiters have you know, too much on their plate from that rec management or they aren't doing rec management in a way. And so it's, I don't know how we're going to solve for it yet.

Speaker B: The only thing that I, this is the only one of the positive kind of characteristics of uh, like an AI screener, right Is if you apply to a job and you know that you're going to have to do a 30 minute assessment or AI screen or some sort of activity, then in my mind that is a way to limit the amount of applications you're going to do. Because if you knew like all right, I'm gonna have to spend half an hour on every job that I apply to because, because AI uh gives us that ability. Now you're not going to apply to 100 jobs because there's no way you're going to have, you know, no way you're going to spend 50 hours doing those types of things. So I think it's almost like you almost have to like put something in Place to screen people to make it a little bit more work. Which I know candidates hate to hear, but that's like, that's like one thing I think about and then I think the mar m. I mean I work with some of these companies that uh, are like the auto apply companies. And the biggest thing I tell them when they're marketing to consumers is you still have to. If you want people to actually land a job with your tool, you need to coach them on. Yes. Using the auto apply tool or the, the tool to like fill out the application to save time on filling out the application. But you still need, you need to be marketing it in a way where it's not just like this magic hack that's gonna magically get you a job, but it's a time saving tool where you can strategically pick jobs you want to apply to and then you can save time by filling out the application. So like I think that's almost it.

Speaker A: Right. Strategically pick the jobs you want to apply to. I think there's a lot of education that's gap with hiring managers around describing the job and or training them on your talent acquisition process and what to expect. Yeah, right. The job should not be posted until you know from. Until the person's butt is in the seat. The job should have been taken down a while ago.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And how do you train them on good interviewing skills and just describing the day in the life, the what I would call a realistic job preview.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that.

Speaker A: Can we start with those instead of the job descriptions? Because candidates aren't reading the whole job description and recruiters are not reading the whole resume. Uh, they're each scanning it for a couple seconds and then that's where you get some of the mismatches. Like I've hired for senior recruiters on my team and have people that have no recruiting experience, at least not on their resume or LinkedIn profile, applying for the job. And it's slog that recruiters get tied down with kind of going through those candidates that should have never applied to the job. So how do you educate candidates not just to apply. Right. Using that strategic thinking to apply to jobs that they're at least minimally qualified for. And then if recruiters can do better rec management, I think that helps bridge some of those gaps.

Speaker B: What, what, what's your thought with. Okay, like we're talking about minimum qualifications. Like what I've always said, like 60 to 80% qualified kind of go for it. Maybe in this market, 80% and above kind of go for it. Uh, what's your thinking, like, you know, how would you kind of coach a job seeker? And like, how would they kind of look at a job description, for example, which you already talked about some of like the, the, the downsides of a job description, but you have a job description. What should people be looking at to like actually see if they're qualified or are there some other things that they should be considering to get a gauge on whether they're qualified? And like, what does being qualified for a job mean? Is it like, how do you kind of figure that out?

Speaker A: Even I don't remember where the study was from or where I saw the stats because it's been a couple years. But there was something that like women will only apply to jobs where they meet like a hundred percent of the requirements on the job, where men will apply when they have like 60%. And I think it's the truth is probably somewhere in between. You want to be at least minimum qualified, but you want to be well qualified to actually have a chance. And then as a job seeker for your, you to stand out, it's not just listing your, you know, what responsibilities on your resume, but really showing the impact that you had to the company and the bottom line. And if you can differentiate yourself that way, that's going to help bring you to the, the top of the pack.

Speaker B: What do you think recruiters are looking at most? Like when you mentioned they scan their resume? Again, I think this is helpful for job seekers like you training a new recruiter and you're saying, hey, you got 100 applications to look through. You know, you got, you got whatever, 10 to 30 seconds, right, to kind of like look through each one to remain time conscious. What are the most important things that you would have that recruited kind of take into, uh, to account?

Speaker A: I'd have them sort a couple of different ways. So first I'd have them look at internal applicants because it's really important to try and grow your own tomato. And if you can provide growth opportunities within the company that you're working at, then that opens up more entry level opportunities for others. And then you kind of grow people up within your organization and lessen people transitioning out of your company. And then referrals, always a place to hide value on referrals. And I think that then brings up the point of how important your network is and not just connecting with people on LinkedIn, but actually trying to get to know them, commenting on any content that they're putting out there, not just putting the thumbs up, but actually make a comment on it and if you start building some of that goodwill, someone's going to see. Oh, Julia just made a couple comments on my last few posts and she sent me a message wanting to have a conversation. I'd be more likely to spend some time, um, and so building some of that equity with people that you're connecting with and building your community and your network. I think that's really critical.

Speaker B: Yeah. So you got internal, you got like your referrals.

Speaker A: And then I'd say thank you, thank you for helping me circle the wagon there. And then it's kind of sorting by the skills. I think that when a recruiter's looking at the resume, they're going to say I like they know the like two most important or three most important things for the hiring manager and they're scanning the resume for those things and if they find two of them, then they might dig in a little further.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think that's kind of what's happening is they're doing a quick scan and if they see these couple of things which I think most people could probably call out in the job posting. Right. It could be total number of years exp experience. It could be a company or industry that you're in that might be similar to the hiring company. And then it could be key skills. If someone's looking for Java, then that's. They're going to make sure that they've got that. If someone's looking for someone that's implement done implementations, they're looking for that.

Speaker B: That's why I just think, uh, automatically job descriptions could be just way better if they just took those like must haves. You know, it's like we're always trained in those intake calls, like what are the must haves? Like what are the things that you really need? And the amount of times I've asked that question and then the things that the hiring manager is telling me are just not even on the job description.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Ah, it doesn't even make any sense. That's, that's immediate one. And then I think to your point, one way that I've always tried to explain to people, you know, when it comes to like really judging if you're qualified for a position, looking at was the last company or one of the companies I worked at, are they in a similar industry or the same industry, are you competing against that company or have you worked for a competitor and have you done a similar job? And I think this, it's like a harsh truth, but a very real truth that hiring is a risk game. People don't want to make a bad hire. And right now I think the skills based hiring is getting better. Like, I know there's some platforms that are really good at like, uh, looking at like on the job skills and being able to test that. But without like being able to test skills in a moment and do some kind of on the job trial, the only other way that you can really minimize that risk is by looking at what have you done in the past and saying, okay, there's a good chance you're going to be able to repeat that in the future. And so the default for most hiring managers that I've spoken to is I love somebody from XYZ company that's a competitor that's doing a similar job because it's just less work for us. We don't have to train, you know, the work. And you know, sometimes we're even hurting the competition. Right. And I think if candidates can grasp that and you can kind of understand that, it's just going to help you. Especially in this market where I don't believe this is all, this is the best market right now to like just shoot your shot randomly at companies. Companies are very selective. Especially now. They know, hey, we can be picky. We can, you know, we can find those purple squirrels right now because there's a lot of people on the market, a lot of quality people. And so even though it's a harsh truth and it kind of takes away some of that opportunism, like in that you find in, in the, in the, the job market, it's helpful to know that because then you can build your resume and you can just understand like, oh, maybe that's why I didn't get the job. Not because, you know, not because the ATS kicked me out, but because in the m. The mind of the hiring manager, I'm just not qualified or I'm too risky.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And you know, in this day and age right now with where the market's at, uh, it's hard for me to believe that a lot of people are just go, yeah, we'll just, let's just find someone because we need someone gave someone their shot. Yeah, yeah, it's just, uh, which, which that's what it is right now. It's not say they couldn't go back to that in the future. But um, well, look, you've written a book, so I love, by the way, I love the job. Uh, the, uh, the title of the book too. From High to Heart. I just, I love that, um, what kind of what inspired you to write the book and like who would be the ideal, you know, reader of this for anyone who's looking for a job? Certain groups of people, like tell it, tell us about that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so you were asking like what do I think about candidate experience earlier. Right. And I was at a conference and someone was talking about the candidate journey from hello to hired. And this is probably three or four years ago. And I've been a big proponent of the candidate journey and journey mapping and improving the processes that we put in front of candidates and hiring managers and just having. It's been a really cathartic journey to decompress from high stress corporate America to write the book. And I wanted to give back with my knowledge to job seekers. And I focused this one. It's the um, insider guide to internships. And I wanted to get this out quickly for college students because Gen Z right now is struggling so much. Their unemployment rate is, you know, higher than new grads and such are higher than the national average. And a lot of college students are really struggling to find their first jobs. So I wanted to start with them. Um, but really any of my content is for all job seekers, but the book is specific for college students who are interns. So either if you're a college student watching this or you're a parent of a college student, this is a great gift to give your student and it'll help from a parental perspective. You're, you're giving them the tools to help them be successful and I'm not giving the quick fixes. I'm um, really trying to help lay out a job search strategy for students and giving them all the information about what's a recruiter, you know, what's the interview processes like. And the book goes through not just creating your resume and figuring out what kind of internship you want, but even all the way to through to managing one on ones with your hiring manager. What if your hiring manager is a dad? And salary negotiation and negotiating your offers. It's got everything from that whole candidate journey to setting yourself up for success while you're in the internship to get that job offer from the company after. So it's a little passion project to help the next generation have successful careers and impart some of my knowledge and wisdom and those of others because I did get insights from other recruiters that I've worked with over the years and then just putting out some job seeker content to help people because you know, I've had friends call me like, well you're a recruiter. Get me a job at this company. And I was like, well, that's not exactly how it works. And so I think that educating it from the insider's perspective, as opposed to a lot of people that are putting information out and giving job seekers advice that isn't really accurate, like the bots are rejecting your resume just because, which isn't really how, you know, ATS is. All the big corporations are not having AI auto reject people. So just trying to be a counter voice to some of the crap, excuse me, that's out there, and give some solid advice for people.

Speaker B: Well, I always, I say it's so important when you're thinking about any type of advice, whether it's advice on how to grow on social media or advice on how to grow a business, or advice on how to parent, advice on anything. Uh, you really gotta look at number one, does a person have experience in what they're talking about? Have they done whatever you're looking to do? Um, have they studied, do they have the education? Like all of those things are legitimate, you know, legitimate. But when, when people don't have that, when they don't have the background, when they don't have the understanding, it's dangerous, right? It's not, it's not necessarily dangerous, but it can just, it can be dangerous, I think, for people when they're taking advice. And one of the things that I've noticed, um, particularly, you know, being a bigger creator on TikTok and Instagram, those two platforms which you know, that just people do consume a lot of content on. There is just the amount of people that are freely giving advice that just have, they've never sat in any seat and, and as far as I can see, sometimes they haven't even really achieved that much. And then they're giving these advices and I think about that, uh, my favorite one is when people have content like, just say this in an interview and it will guarantee you get the job. And I just think, well, if there's one job and five people say it, are they all guaranteed to get the job? No, only one person is. How can you make that claim? Um, so I love when real practitioners are putting out information. Why, just before we close here, I'm curious, why is it, why is it so hard right now for the, for the new grads? Like, what is going on that's just making it so difficult?

Speaker A: I think that probably several different things. I think AI has taken some of the entry level jobs away. Now I think it's going to be shifting the types of jobs so it's not necessarily that they're going away, um, or that AIs taken over all these jobs, but I think it's different jobs and skills are needed. So maybe it's not as many software development roles, but maybe there are more prompt engineering roles that are available. So I think that's one thing. And then just with some of the way that our economy is in uh, our country right now and there's a lot of uncertainty with things with tariffs and such that some companies like for internships are either, you know, it might be shrinking the number of interns that they're hired going to bring on each year and or might be kind of slow rolling the hiring. So they might be delaying some hires and not necessarily having a hiring freeze, but slow rolling some of the activity that they might normally do. And so um, just playing a little bit of a waiting game to see what's going to happen with the, with the tariffs and, and such. And I think those are some of the challenges that are, that I'm seeing and hearing.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, a hundred percent.

Speaker A: Well, and it's just more competitive.

Speaker B: It is, it is. And it's um. I think the key word that you said though was uncertainty. And I think that, I mean I don't think I, I feel like I've heard that word so much more ever since the pandemic. That was like when the word started happening. I'm uncertain about the future. But it has, it has been like that for the last few years.

Speaker A: People are staying put in jobs, right? They're not leaving.

Speaker B: Yeah, job hugging. Yeah, that's the, that's the new, the new trend. Nicolette. Job hugging. It's ah, crazy. Well, look, we'll put a link for the book in the description. Um, and I'm gonna just, you know, I'll encourage anybody who's listening to this. Um, if you are new grad, your entry level, obviously this book is for you. If you're looking for a job in general, I would highly recommend getting the book as well. And then if you're a parent of someone who's gonna be looking for a job where it is right now, you know, pick up a copy of, of the book. I know there's gonna be a ton of ton of valuable information in there. Uh, Julia, for you as well. Where can people connect with you? What's the best place uh, for people to find out about you?

Speaker A: So I've got a website. Hi. The number two hire.com and then something else I have, I just want to plug it. Um, I'm Testing it. So I can't say it's like, brilliant or anything, but I've been training in AI on my content and my voice and my philosophy around, like, job seeker help. So anyone that's a job seeker or, you know, a job seeker, it's called. I'm calling it like Coach Julia AI. And you can go there and ask it questions and.

Speaker B: Sweet.

Speaker A: Find some good, good answers. Trained on my two decades of experience. But hi to hired.com recruiting. Uh, Julia. Julia Levy on LinkedIn. And, uh, you know, I love talking TA and I love helping job seekers. So thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's been great and I'm excited. I know this episode will actually have aired, uh, after Rec Fest, uh, but obviously we're before breakfast now. Uh, so I'm super excited to see you at Rec Fest as well. And it'll be great to, uh, I'm sure they'll. I know every year at Rec Fest, there's some recruiters as well who are kind of looking for work, and I'm sure they're gonna find a ton of value as well in, in the content. So, uh, thank you so much for joining me on today's show. And, uh, yeah, for anyone who's out there, if you're looking to find out, uh, more about Julia, I definitely recommend, uh, connecting with her on LinkedIn. Just say, Hey, I heard you on the. On the Recruiting is no joke podcast. Uh, and then we will be back next week with another episode as well. So, uh, if you want to get involved in a show, just go to www.therealishrecruiter.com, get a hold of me DM me on LinkedIn. Um, always looking for new guests and sponsors and people to get involved in the show. So, uh, Julia, thank you again and, uh, we'll see you soon. Yeah, we'll talk soon. Bye. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of Recruiting is no joke. If these conversations resonated with you, don't forget to hit the follow button to stay updated on our latest episodes. To stay connected with me, head over to therealistrecruiter.com it's your go to place for more content, connections and a deeper dive into the world of recruitment. See you next week.