Get Hired Podcast

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Get Hired Podcast with Nicky Bulmer and Misty Combs. Every episode is an opportunity to learn better résumé and interviewing skills with these HR experts, as they review the résumé of a job searcher and conduct a practice interview with them. They give real feedback that everyone can learn from. 

This is a Post Status production in partnership with Liquid Web, sponsored by Omnisend.

Hi, I’m Michelle Frechette from Post Status and I am super excited to reinvigorate the Get Hired podcast and we are bringing it back with a completely different perspective, a completely different plan. And I am super excited because I’m not even going to be part of it. I am here to introduce our new podcasters, Nicky Bulmer and Misty Combs. So ladies, welcome to your podcasting experience here. And I don’t know if either of you have ever been on podcasts or hosted a podcast before, but let’s meet you so people know who they’re going to be talking to. So Nicky, let’s start with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, where you live, and what is your day job.

[00:01:18] Speaker B: Thanks, Michelle. I work at Liquid Web. I’m the hiring coordinator, so I do all of the hiring for the company as a whole, but I also get to go to high schools and work with kids who are just starting to enter the workforce and help them review their résumés and practice for interviews. And I work with Michigan Works as well to help people re-entering the workforce get practice back into doing interviewing. So I love giving people that leg up on being able to get back into the workforce. So I’m really excited about doing the podcast with you.

[00:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I’m excited about having you do it. So you said Michigan, so you must be located in Michigan.

[00:01:55] Speaker B: I am in Michigan. Sorry.

[00:01:57] Speaker A: No, that’s okay. I know that’s where our headquarters are. I’m also fully full time employed at Liquid Web. Post Status is my side gig, if you will. And I’m really excited that I get to do both and Liquid Web allows me to do both and to participate in the community that way.

I’m excited because you have so much experience. I can talk about jobs. I post jobs every Wednesday.

Well, I haven’t this week yet. Every week I’ll say I post jobs every week.

Job threads so people can find employment. But I have only interviewed people when I’ve been hiring for positions that I had open. And so I’m excited that you’ve got all this great experience that you’ll be able to talk to people and talk about, which brings me to our next co-host, Misty Combs. Misty, hi.

[00:02:42] Speaker C: Hi. I’m Misty Combs. I also am part of Liquid Web and I’ve been here since 2014. I get the pleasure of working with both Nicky and Michelle.

And one of the things I’m excited about this podcast is an opportunity to engage with people from all different locations and across the world. Liquid Web is also a globally diversified organization, so we are lucky enough to have people. At last count, I think it was in 34 countries and 42 states. So I’m looking forward to just engaging with more people and getting to know the tech community a little better.

[00:03:21] Speaker A: So it’s probably a good time. There’s a commonality here. We’re hearing both Liquid Web and Post Status. We are partnering at Post Status. We’re partnering with Liquid Web. Very grateful that they are allowing you.

It’s so weird when I work at both places that we are allowing you to work with us.

My head gets a little confused sometimes when I start to talk about it, but I am really excited that Liquid Web is partnering with Post Status to be able to help people do better at forming their résumés and their interview skills. So that brings me back to “what is this podcast about and how are we going to do it?” So I’m going to turn it over to you and talk about exactly what we’re planning to do and how we’re going to roll it out. So, Nicky, can you give us a little bit of background about what we’ve talked about for this?

[00:04:10] Speaker B: So one of my pet side projects is I’m probably never actually going to release the book, but I’m trying to put together a book called How to Not Get Hired to show all the crazy things that people do in interviews just because they don’t have the experience or the knowledge. Or maybe they’re from a different generation and things have changed in the time since then or, you know, there’s different rules and regulations depending on where you are in the world. So you see a wide range of wild things from people sometimes. So I am really excited to help people look at current hiring practices and trends and, you know, practice and get on board with what’s happening now in hiring.

[00:04:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it’s exciting. I know that we talked about a way to have people come into the podcast and specifically what we’re going to ask them to do as part of it. Misty, can you give us an idea of what we’re asking people to do and exactly what we’re planning for this to be as part of our WordPress community.

[00:05:17] Speaker C: We’re hoping that people who are interested in getting a second set of eyes on their résumé will participate by submitting it and hopefully engage with us on the podcast in kind of a mock interview so we have an opportunity to see real world, real life people who are in the workforce looking to either grow or. Technology has kind of taken a hit lately, and there seems to be a number of people who are struggling to find a position quickly. So we’re looking forward to working with people to help them out and those of us who might not be part of the interview, mock interview process to be able to glean some tips and tricks that might help them.

[00:06:01] Speaker A: Absolutely. I think one of the better things that helps people do better when they’re interviewing is to really hone that résumé and cover letter. And I don’t even know, you all can get into it a little bit better. I mean, I. I remember the days when we had to print résumés. You had to go to, like, a printer and print them out, and they had to be so generic because you might be applying to several different places. We’ve moved past that in technology. So you can actually hone your résumé per job. And I think so many times your cover letter is an email or something you upload. Depending on the portal and who’s hiring, it can look very different. But in a remote world that we are, we’re often doing video interviews just like, like we do podcasting. And so there’s a different set of skills, I think, that are required when people are looking to be hired in technology today. And like Nicky said, there’s different parts of the world with different rules. There’s different socioeconomic backgrounds that people come from, different cultures that people come from. But the tech community is very unified. And so depending on where you’re coming from, you may present differently than what the hiring managers are looking for. Especially like when you’ve got people who are screening interviews.

I don’t think right now that we are in a place where we’re begging for people to apply. Just give us an idea, Nicky. You’re somebody who really sees all those résumés come in. If there’s, let’s say generically, I know that we don’t hire just developers, but let’s say it’s for developer or support staff. What is the, like, overall number are you seeing in the end of 2024, going into 2025? How many résumés are you getting? How many applicants are you getting per position that’s open right now?

[00:07:45] Speaker B: So I actually just had this conversation with the high school ISD that I worked with just on Wednesday, when I open a job position for a developer or even support, within 24 hours I have 600 to 1000 resumes in 24 hours. And a lot of those are things that people did like one click Indeed apply and didn’t even read the job posting. So they may or may not be a fit. But by the time you’ve slugged through a thousand résumés, you know, when you’re looking through them on the first glance, you’re not looking for who’s the best fit. You’re looking at who you can eliminate so that you can hone down on the best fit. So those, those resumes are super important, especially, you know, when people are bypassing a lot of the application through that one click apply. I would actually encourage people when they find a job on Indeed to instead go directly to the job board to apply. And that way you get all of your information sent in, but also that way you make sure that you’re avoiding any scams that are posted on Indeed or LinkedIn where people are just posting fake jobs to collect your information. So good point.

[00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And Misty, when you are thinking about, like, I don’t know, when I hear 600 to 1,000 in a day, I think that you’ve really got to do something special to stand out. First of all, as Nicky said, you have to make sure you’re not eliminated right off the bat. Right. But once you make it past that initial screening, you’ve got to show that you’re different than the other maybe three or 400 that are still left.

And this podcast is a way, don’t you think, to be able to do that, to really give some people some good tips and tricks?

[00:09:25] Speaker C: I do. And I also think it’s a good opportunity to have a real life interviewing experience now that we are so much more work from home and more engaged through technology. The interview is a little different than it was back in the day when we hauled ourselves into an office with sweaty hands and shook hands and handed out those, those resumes that we had printed on the extra thick resume paper. And we were trying to, you know, so everything is, is different now. And as Nicky said, it’s not just people new to the hiring world or new to in their career, it’s people who are reinventing their career into something that is maybe a more modern world than what they left. And so I’m hoping that we can help a lot of people do this.

[00:10:13] Speaker A: I’ll tell you one funny story before we wrap things up, but when I was, I’m a little older than y’all, so I was entering the workforce in the late 80s and early 90s. And the tip that I was given was, when you sit down to an interview, make sure you cross your legs at the ankles and not at the knees. So I received that tip too far beyond that in today’s hiring field.

[00:10:38] Speaker C: And not to wear perfume because so many people are allergic to it.

[00:10:42] Speaker B: And when I’m actually still down for that one. If we’re in person, please take the cologne back a notch, dial back the perfume.

[00:10:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. And there are still in person interviews, for sure. There are places that are not hiring remotely, and so those tips are still good. In some places, I don’t think y’all are looking at where. Where ladies cross their ankles or knees or people cross their legs. But it is funny.

[00:11:06] Speaker B: I don’t care what they’re wearing from the waist down, even, like, exactly.

[00:11:11] Speaker A: Just don’t stand up in front of your camera if you’re not, please. Fully dressed.

[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:11:16] Speaker A: So I’m excited. So what is our recording schedule and what does our publication schedule look like?

[00:11:23] Speaker B: So I think we’re doing every other Friday starting in January, so Friday morning, Eastern time zone, which we figured would be able to hit a lot of different locations as well to make it convenient for people to participate.

[00:11:41] Speaker A: So that’s what we’re going to record, and we’ll have it out by the following Wednesday. My team will have it all buttoned up and edited and put out on both YouTube and our our podcasting channels so people can pay attention and ask questions in the chat and things like that afterwards. And we’ll make sure that we monitor that and get back to people if they do have questions. But if they are interested in being one of the people who’s interviewed, all they have to do is go to poststatus.com I will have a post up there by the end of the day so that people can go ahead and be considered for this. And we will ask you a series of questions in that list. Nicky, do you have those questions up so people can have an idea of what they should be thinking about? I know you sent me. You sent me a link a minute ago, so it’s got to be there somewhere. But we want to make sure that you are available to record at that particular time. We’re going to ask you to upload some information. We won’t ask you anything in that list that we wouldn’t be allowed to ask you officially, legally here in the United States. So we’re going to follow those kinds of rules as well. So we don’t care if you’re married, we don’t care if you have children, all of those things.

[00:12:48] Speaker B: We don’t want to know how old you are. Nope.

[00:12:51] Speaker A: Don’t tell us. But are there other questions that they need to think about before they actually go to that website and apply?

[00:12:58] Speaker B: I actually do have the questions up. I can share my screen on that.

[00:13:02] Speaker A: Sure.

[00:13:03] Speaker B: Did that work?

[00:13:04] Speaker A: It did.

[00:13:06] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So it’s just a basic list of the questions to make sure that you’re available for the time that we’re recording. And some of them are just typical interview questions so that you’re better prepared and we can better prepare on how to interview you because we are going to try to tailor it a little bit to what jobs you’re looking for and what your skill set is. So we do ask about your educational background. That doesn’t mean you have to have a degree to participate. So please consider participating. Even if you’re, you know, a high school graduate or a GED or whatever. We don’t care. We just are looking for more information on how to interact and then there’s just what specific job you’re looking for. Are you able to meet the technology needs to participate? Just really basic set of questions for.

[00:13:54] Speaker A: For our non-sighted listeners and for people who are listening and not watching. I’m just going to read through those really quickly so that if you would like to know what those are, we’re going to ask your name for sure. We need to know who you are when we meet and record and if you’re available at that time. Like I said, that’ll be 9am Eastern/New York time on Fridays. What’s your current role if you have one, or if you’re not if or or your more recent, most recent role if you are not currently employed? Your educational background, what’s the highest level of education you’ve achieved, what type of job or industry are you preparing to interview for? So if you’re in marketing, if you’re a developer, if you’re looking for a support role, etc. What are your primary goals for this interview with us? Practicing responses, improving your body language, handling difficult questions. For example, are there specific types of interview formats that you’d like to focus on? Behavioral, technical, a panel discussion, case study. Do you have any particular areas of concern or skills you’d like feedback on? Are you comfortable dedicating time for feedback and reflection after the interview? Do you have a specific job posting, a role in mind for which this interview can be tailored? And give us a link to that if you, if you. If the answer is yes, so that we can make sure that this podcast recording is right for what you’re looking for so that we can meet your needs as well. Do you have any prepared materials in addition to your résumé, like a cover letter portfolio that you could include for us as well? And we’re going to use Zoom for the interview and for the podcast. And are you able to connect to Zoom with both camera and audio? Are there any accommodations or preferences that we need to be aware of? Because we are absolutely inclusive of everybody. We will prepare verbal feedback after the interview, so you will hear that in real time. And are there other resources you’d like us to send afterwards? Are you interested in participating in this? Because we need to make sure that not only do you want us to look at your interview or your résumé, but we want to know that you’re actually in it for a real discussion for your growth. And those are the people that are listening to the podcast as well.

What would success look for, like, look like for you at the end of our recording time? And how do you typically handle feedback or critique in professional settings? Those things are important to us to make sure that we tailor that time to be really productive, not only for you, but for the people who listen and watch the podcast through Post Status. And just so that we’re fully. You can take your screen off there, Nicky, just so that you’re fully. Thank you. Prepared. I am not going to be part of this at all. So Nicky and Misty will be the ones who are going to meet with you. We’re going to record it and I’m just going to be the one that helps get it put out on the web. But it was been a pleasure today to introduce both of you to the post status community and those who are listening to the podcast. I am super excited because I think that you are both incredibly talented, incredibly resourceful and knowledgeable about hiring. And I think that you can help do a lot of good for those people who are looking to get hired in the WordPress community. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for taking on this project. I’m really excited for Liquid Web to see the work that you do and know the faces behind the names as well. So any final thoughts before I let you all go? Nicky?

[00:17:00] Speaker B: Yeah, just thank you for putting all this together. I’m really excited to help out the larger community as a whole instead of just here in Michigan, so thank you.

[00:17:08] Speaker A: Oh, my pleasure. And Misty, what about you?

[00:17:11] Speaker C: Same. Thanks for leading this adventure. I, I’m not a podcaster and this is totally out of my realm, so the whole sweaty hands thing, I totally have it, so please be kind to me. I’m a little nervous in this whole situation, but I’m looking for, I’m looking forward to it.

[00:17:29] Speaker B: We’ll be as nervous as you is what she’s saying, for sure.

[00:17:33] Speaker A: But by February, you can’t not be a podcaster anymore. You’re gonna be like, oh, yeah, I got a podcast. So it’ll be a lot of fun. So we’re looking forward to that. Go ahead.

[00:17:43] Speaker C: And in case you didn’t notice, my whole desk was jumping up and down as my puppy was under here and knocked over my coffee and whatever. So we’ll probably have all kinds of adventures in this.

[00:17:52] Speaker A: That’s right. Because this is real world and these kinds of things actually happen when you’re interviewing people on the Internet. So it’s, we’re going to keep it real for sure. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re going to have the Get Hired podcast that’s going to come back to us in 2025. By the third or fourth week of January, you’ll see the first episode out. I’m happy. I hope you guys are excited and I hope everybody listening is looking forward to learning from you and from who your guests might be. So thank you very much and we’ll see everybody in 2025 to Get Hired! Thank you.

The Get Hired podcast is a Post Status production in partnership with Liquid Web. Sponsored by Omnisend.