In this episode of the “Get Hired” podcast, host Nicky Bulmer and co-host Michelle Frechette interview Tatiane, an experienced WordPress developer. Tatiane shares her journey in WordPress development, emphasizing her skills in creating and customizing themes and plugins. The discussion covers Tatiane’s approach to handling feedback, collaborating with teams, and optimizing WordPress sites. Nicky and Michelle provide Tatiane with resume and interview tips, highlighting the importance of clear communication and showcasing both technical and soft skills. The episode concludes with practical advice for job seekers, reinforcing the podcast’s mission to enhance job application materials and interview skills.
Top Takeaways:
- Cover Letters Should Be Concise & Tailored – A strong cover letter shouldn’t just repeat the resume. Instead, it should highlight why your skills and experience are a great fit for the specific role and company. Less is often more—focusing on one key project or skill that directly relates to the job can make a stronger impact than listing everything.
- Confidence & Clarity Matter in Interviews – Candidates should confidently communicate their skills, especially when discussing technical expertise. Using specific language, such as naming programming languages or frameworks, helps interviewers understand the depth of knowledge. Additionally, if an interviewer has an accent or uses unfamiliar words, repeating for clarification or asking them to rephrase is a good strategy.
- Continuous Improvement & Adaptability Lead to Success – Surrounding yourself with the language, culture, and best practices of your industry (as Tatiane did with English) makes growth easier. Being open to feedback, refining application materials, and improving communication skills over time can significantly increase job prospects.
Mentioned In The Show:
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🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:
- Tatiane Pires (Founder and Software Developer, SmartCoding.dev)
- Misty Combs (Human Resource Director, Liquid Web)
- Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
- Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)
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Transcript
Nicky Bulmer 00:00:03 Thank you, everybody for joining us at our second Get Hired podcast, where you can write in to have your resume reviewed and practice interviewing with real hiring people and get real time feedback. So if you think that this is something you might want to participate in, we can put the link up at the end here, for, you to sign up and join us on our podcast. But today we have Tatiane, joining us. She is a aspiring and also current WordPress developer, with a good amount of experience. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Tatiane Pires 00:00:45 Thank you for having me.
Nicky Bulmer 00:00:49 So I will go ahead and, dive into just a sample of what it might be like to interview with us for a WordPress development role. And then I’ll go ahead and do the resume review after that. And that way you don’t have to think about any critiques and stuff that we had on your resume while you’re doing the interview. I don’t want it to be distracting for you.
Nicky Bulmer 00:01:12 Tell me a little bit about yourself and about your career path and about, you know, why you’re here with us today.
Tatiane Pires 00:01:19 Well, I started tinkering with WordPress back in 2006 when I started my own first blog, and then I started to create a template of my own. And that’s where I started in WordPress. And then, some years later, I was already working with commercial themes, customizing them and or creating custom themes from scratch. So various different things and customizing plugins, creating custom plugins for different. Different purposes.
Nicky Bulmer 00:02:02 Nice. What is your favorite plugin that you’ve worked with so far or built from scratch?
Tatiane Pires 00:02:11 Well, I built one for Calendar management. It was for a startup I worked. They needed something very specific. I remember back then I reviewed existing plugins because we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Right? So there’s so many great plugins out there, but then.
Nicky Bulmer 00:02:32 We throw out a plug for The Events Calendar plugin as well right now. Sorry. Please continue.
Tatiane Pires 00:02:41 Oh, no. It’s all right. But they had training sessions and there were some specific needs at the time. Then discussing with the team, we arrive at the conclusion that it would be a better fit to create a custom plugin. And then I had the chance to work with, create creating custom SQL queries. WordPress has a lot of nice functions and methods that allows us to interact with the database, but there was some specific needs, some queries to, I created tables in WordPress database. So to, to join stuff and select things from with different criteria. So it was very nice, very very interesting.
Nicky Bulmer 00:03:29 Sweet. How do you handle when you’re working on a plugin? you know, you’re working with people who aren’t necessarily very necessarily very technical themselves. How do you handle receiving feedback from those non-technical clients or non-technical team members? And get that implemented?
Tatiane Pires 00:03:50 Well, I always try to remember that there are so many other things that I am in comparison, not proficient like I’m very proficient with WordPress. So many other things. I’m not proficient. So I try to remember, what’s it like when I try to give feedback on something to someone who’s got more technical expertise on something? I’m giving feedback, so I try to always put myself in the place of the person giving me feedback to try to understand their point of view and try to understand where they are coming from in order to, as a WordPress developer to build on, on that, to deliver a better experience.
Nicky Bulmer 00:04:39 What if, what if the person you are working with is just exceptionally angry and their feedback comes across very negatively? How do you work through that?
Tatiane Pires 00:04:50 Oh wow. Then I will probably need to step back. Gather my thoughts, my feelings. Think through it. Because it looks like a very complicated scenario. And working remotely. It has advantages because it gives us, this time to to think and to go through, different points and to craft, in a, in a more elaborate response than we would in, if we would have to reply promptly. So I think I would start from there.
Nicky Bulmer 00:05:39 Walk me through your process when you start to create a plugin from conception to completion. What does that process look like? And you can just give me the high level overview. You don’t have to get into the nitty gritty.
Tatiane Pires 00:05:54 Okay. First, what does this plugin need to accomplish? Okay. Then we have arrived at the conclusion that we need to build a custom plugin. We have studied, what’s out there? So from that point, what this plugin needs to accomplish, then what, do we need? What we need in terms of the user interaction to build based on that, I think. Both on the admin side and on the front end. What is, what is this plugin going to do on this front in order to determine what to build next. I think.
Nicky Bulmer 00:06:43 What what’s most exciting to you about working with WordPress? And I’m sorry, I didn’t even introduce Michelle. Michel’s here with us instead of Misty today. I’m. I’m so new at podcasting.
Michelle Frechette: It’s all good.
Nicky Bulmer 00:06:54 I’m very bad at it. But, I know that you work. Have worked with Michelle in the past. What about working with WordPress is exciting to you? What keeps bringing you back to the industry?
Tatiane Pires 00:07:13 Oh, I love the flexibility to create so many different things. Inside this this software. And it’s always amazing. The the community. How the, when we need something, either need help or it’s a great and, community. I love that about WordPress. And I love to work with PHP and WordPress.
Nicky Bulmer 00:07:45 Where is your favorite source to go to if you get stuck on something? You mentioned how great the community is. Where do you look first when you need feedback from the community?
Tatiane Pires 00:07:57 I think I would start at the documentation because it’s really well documented. And then expanding to searching the web, searching forums. I think these are my most common starting points.
Nicky Bulmer 00:08:17 You don’t have like a favorite forums that you use or a chat group, or, you know, a specific blog that, you know, you find a lot of answers at.
Tatiane Pires 00:08:28 Oh, I usually find several different sources on search tools.
Nicky Bulmer 00:08:40 Are there any tools or processes that you find to be exceptionally helpful for bringing together a distributed team?
Tatiane Pires 00:08:50 Oh, Well, I have been. Do you mean, software tools?
Nicky Bulmer 00:08:58 Software tools that can be anything. Anything that you use to communicate and collaborate working remotely.
Tatiane Pires 00:09:08 Yeah. I have been working with teams that use Microsoft Teams, teams that have used Slack. These are the two most recent. Yeah. Because, what what I believe is most important is the, is to build a collaborative, cohesive team. The tools will be important, but you can swap the tools. You have different features in each one. But the more important component here, I believe, is the team, the collaboration within the team.
Nicky Bulmer 00:09:57 Let’s say I came to you with just a busted WordPress site. Like, slow to load, 400 plugins, like just a mess. What are the steps that you would take to optimize my site?
Tatiane Pires 00:10:15 Oh, wow. I would take a look at the plugins to. I would probably start reviewing what they are doing and trying to, if possible, to reduce the number of active plugins and testing, testing the, the, the impact, in order to oh, if something if I disable the plugin and it doesn’t seem to be having a great greater impact. Then can we remove? Can we move on and remove that? Because, I believe it’s always better to not have like, a lot of plugins, even if they are disabled, like we can we can favorite our plugins on WordPress.org, so we don’t need to have them on our websites just because we love them.
Nicky Bulmer 00:11:14 Anything else? Okay.
Tatiane Pires 00:11:15 Yeah, I would I would review the, the theme is that a is that a child theme is how how has that been implemented. How many how images are handled, how the JavaScript is handled there. I think I would start there are so many things I think I would start there.
Nicky Bulmer 00:11:38 Okay. Do you typically prefer working alone or do you like working with a distributed team?
Tatiane Pires 00:11:49 I. My most recent experience with WordPress it was with an agency. I worked alone in the sense that I was the only developer responsible for the tasks I was working. It was support for WordPress sites. But there was, two other developers, and we interacted, very, I, we interacted a lot on, on chat tools, to exchange information, to solve questions, to, share progress.
Nicky Bulmer 00:12:32 Have you ever done, like, go ahead.
Michelle Frechette 00:12:37 So I was going to ask along the lines of working remotely, in our world that, you know, especially within the WordPress world right now, we have people from teams all over the world. So how do you handle sometimes the time zone, you know, conflicts that we might have. So if there’s a meeting that is, you know, in the middle of your night, but you’re required to be there, how does that impact you? How amenable are you to flexing your schedule around some of those needs of working on a remote team?
Tatiane Pires 00:13:07 I have recently worked. I’m in Brazil. So I have worked with teams on the East, on US on the East Coast. I, there was another project where some members were on the Pacific coast. That’s as far as I have needed to manage time zones, until now. But I believe, that, being able to organize and schedule ahead, like, if, if, team member would be in Europe or in Asia that we can, I believe I would, work through that in order to. Oh, if I need to be on a meeting. On a meeting? That’s like at night on my time zone. Then we, we are going to ask as teams, we self-organized. Okay, I will have this hour out of my usual time, but then we compensate like, oh, I start later, or I end earlier my day because there was that one hour that I was available.
Nicky Bulmer 00:14:25 Excellent. That is all the questions I had prepared. Michelle, do you have any additional questions you want to add in here?
Michelle Frechette 00:14:32 So what what is making you want to change, you know, positions or go from freelancing to working within a company? What’s inspiring your change at this point in your career?
Tatiane Pires 00:14:45 Oh, I have worked, with, WordPress before in company projects. I, I think it brings more a sense of more stability. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:15:05 Do you have a space within your home or an office space that you have dedicated for you to be able to focus on, on your work time?
Tatiane Pires 00:15:14 Yes. I work from my living room. So here to my left side is my second monitor. When I open camera, I shift, a small table here, so my bookshelf is behind me. But usually I work over there because there’s a bigger screen there. I work with two screens, the laptop screen and the the other monitor.
Michelle Frechette 00:15:36 Yeah, I may have that same setup.
Nicky Bulmer 00:15:41 I just blur mine. I’m in my basement.
Michelle Frechette 00:15:47 Excellent. So what kinds of questions would you have for us if we were, if this was a real interview and we were hiring for a WordPress developer? What kinds of questions would you have for us as the people who are doing the hiring?
Tatiane Pires 00:16:01 Okay, I would have made my homework researching about the company. I am very interested about how how is the culture, how are how are the teams, self-organized in the sense like what? What are the timezone differences we are going to work with, and how does the team organizes on the on this topic. What about let’s see. I am really, I’d be really interested in diving into each company’s culture. Like how, What, what? And. Oh, yeah, something something else occurred. Just occurred to me. What they believe is are the key steps. Let’s say I’m hired. What do you think are the key steps for me to move forward, to deliver value, to integrate, to successfully integrate with the company, with the culture, with your team.
Michelle Frechette 00:17:09 That’s a good.
Nicky Bulmer 00:17:10 That’s a great question. Those are really great questions.
Michelle Frechette 00:17:13 One of the questions I like to ask when I’m interviewing somebody is, what do you want to tell me about yourself and your work style that I haven’t asked you yet? Is there something that you wish you could convey to us?
Tatiane Pires 00:17:25 Oh, yeah. I’m usually, a like 9 to 5 person. So I’m happy to organize around if we are going to organize the team around different time zones, we, I’m happy to organize myself. Coordinate with the team around. What does the team need? But I’m usually okay. I’m. I’m very, constant in that point. I start at that time. I usually end at that time. If I have any different need, we will coordinate. But, because, as, as a dungeon, Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master, I need to prepare sessions. I need to do several different things.
Michelle Frechette 00:18:14 So that, to me, sounds like you. You set healthy boundaries and you have extracurricular activities that also fulfill your life, which I think is a healthy sign. When you’re hiring somebody. For sure. I’m sorry, Nicky, I interrupted you.
Nicky Bulmer 00:18:27 No. You’re fine. One of the things that we do here at Liquid Web, is called the D&D Lunch and Learn where we invited the entire company that wanted to play to join us, for an hour, once every two weeks and play Dungeons and Dragons.
Tatiane Pires 00:18:45 Oh, that’s so nice.
Nicky Bulmer 00:18:47 We had so much interest in it. I have to run four separate groups so that everybody can fit in and actually play. And it’s. I love that we have the c-level executive is playing one of them. We have facilities folks playing support techs, developers, sales, marketing affiliates, like people from all walks of the company. And I love D&D because it brings all of that together, and puts everybody on a level playing field. And I’m going to do a shout out to to Rhonda Capone, who is our chief of staff. She’s she plays, in one of our D&D groups, and she doesn’t know anything about D&D, but she knows everything about teamwork. And I love the dynamic that, you know, the different levels of of experience have brought to the table because, you know, that was a group of murder hobos, and she’s got them, like talking to rats and convincing them to, like, befriend the rats and.
Tatiane Pires 00:19:47 Oh, nice.
Michelle Frechette 00:19:48 That’s fun. That is fun.
Nicky Bulmer 00:19:51 But, you know, if I were you, you know, just kind of moving. Jumping ahead a little bit and giving a piece of resume feedback. Put some of that on your resume. As an extracurricular, because being a game master shows incredible organization.
Nicky Bulmer 00:20:10 It shows teamwork. It shows, you know, a fortitude to bring a bunch of murder hobos together and shuffle them through an adventure. You know, and and it’s something that, you know, you can bond with, potentially your interviewer about. You know, as you mentioned D&DI’m like, all right, let’s talk about D&D. Let’s go.
Tatiane Pires 00:20:31 And yeah, I can nerd out about D&D all day. Yeah.
Nicky Bulmer 00:20:36 Yeah. Same.
Michelle Frechette 00:20:38 Then my glaze over.
Nicky Bulmer 00:20:42 But, you know, if you can find that thing that gives you, you know, that superficial bond with your interviewer, everything that you say is going to be seen in another light just because, you know, we all have those unconscious biases where, you know, if we like the person, we’re going to like their answers more. I mean, we try to avoid them entirely. But if it’s something that.
Michelle Frechette: We’re humans.
Nicky Bulmer: Yeah. But if It’s actually something that you can tie in to the culture of the company and stuff too. I think that’s great. And it showcases a really important skill set. So it’s not just a superficial, you know, bonding experience. It’s learning about you as a person too.
Tatiane Pires 00:21:25 Yeah. And that’s DMs. We and I have already learned that in in practical moments we need to be prepared. Like I have prepared a session. I have prepared a bunch of things. My players might be interested, but they might not be interested in any of that at all. And I have to come with something based on what they are, the story they are telling with me at the table. So that shows flexibility and all sorts of interesting things for work, right? Yeah. I love your idea. I love your suggestion.
Michelle Frechette 00:21:55 Now, some of the things I know, I’m sorry, some of the things I know about you because I’ve been working through. WP includes me with you there. Is that you’re also into acting and learning acting. And I would guess with that comes improv. And then also that, you are a fledgling podcaster yourself.
Michelle Frechette 00:22:14 And those are things that I think would also be good to add in that section, because the ability to improv means that you can think fast and talk to people easily and quickly, because your brain can adjust fast like that. And also the, the podcasting, it takes a different kind of discipline and a different kind of ability to put yourself out there, to be able to do that. So I think that those would also be good things to include.
Tatiane Pires 00:22:39 Yeah. I’ll be, out here with you. I’ll be vulnerable, to, to an extent. And share that I haven’t yet added that to my resume out of some level of of fear that that would be seen. Okay, but is she really going to work as much as we need? Because there’s in, in practice sometimes not every company, not every team, but sometimes, it feels like companies wants us to work a little bit more going after hours and stuff. And, and that was like, okay, if I add all of that, will that instead, talk against me, make a case against me?
Nicky Bulmer 00:23:30 And it may. But let me ask you this. Do you want to work for that company that doesn’t want to give you your free time to pursue your extracurriculars. Your hobbies. Things I love in life.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:41 I was about to ask the same question.
Tatiane Pires 00:23:43 Right? I see, I see the point.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:46 I am not a good culture.
Tatiane Pires 00:23:47 I see, I like. Yeah, and it will filter out the the ones who wouldn’t give me that kind of flexibility that I, that I love so much and that I need.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:56 Exactly.
Tatiane Pires 00:23:57 Oh, great. Thank you.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:58 Yeah. And when you talked about having a day where you start at nine and you end at five every day and you can be flexible, but then you want that time back in another part. I think you said that very well. Sometimes people say that and it sounds like I don’t want to work any extra and it comes across like, that’s fine. You’re allowed to not want to work any extra. We’re not paying overtime. We’re not doing those things. You just have to say it the way you did, though, with like, healthy boundaries as opposed to imposing negativity into it. So I thought that was really, really good the way that you said that is also so.
Nicky Bulmer 00:24:31 I agree, because as an as an interviewer, when you said I’m a 9 to 5 person, I mean, You know, because there’s so much collaboration outside of that. But when you went on to talk about how you would flex your schedule and how you know you, you are willing to be flexible and make up those hours here or there, totally washed away that feeling. So that was.
Tatiane Pires 00:24:52 Yeah. When I right after I said 9 to 5, I had that thing like, okay, that’s something I’m sharing here with you. I’m like, I’m being vulnerable here with you because I would most likely not have phrased it like that in an actual interview.
Michelle Frechette: Sure.
Tatiane Pires: Because of what you’re mentioning, I would have put it in a way, to and to start off emphasizing, availability to accommodate different needs.
Nicky Bulmer 00:25:22 Yeah. And, but I think, I think that you handled it well here even being vulnerable because like you explained it, you talked it through.
Nicky Bulmer 00:25:31 And again if somebody’s not willing to work with your schedule and give you a good work life balance, then you don’t want to work with them. You know? You’re interviewing a company as much as that company is interviewing you, and it’s important that that match is good because it’s a waste of both both sides time, money, effort. And if you if the company is hiring somebody, that is eventually not going to be a good fit just for even if it’s just culture reasons, you know, that’s it’s something like $80,000 is the cost of a bad hire. For, you know, the pay that you pay. Yeah. Training time, materials, everything. Yeah. Yeah. That’s just a rough average.
Michelle Frechette 00:26:10 But the one way you could have said that differently rather than the 9 to 5 which causes that, is you could say I like to establish set working hours and so that my schedule is predictable with the ability to flex my time as needed.
Tatiane Pires 00:26:26 Noted. I will definitely do that.
Michelle Frechette 00:26:28 Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:26:29 Because that says to me, who has that healthy boundaries you have an expectation of when you start and stop, but you haven’t told me specific hours that may or may not work for me. If I was like in a different time zone and I wanted you to work 10 to 6 instead of 9 to 5, is are you able to do that when you, you know, kind of thing. So I mean, it might be just a little bit gentler way of saying it.
Tatiane Pires 00:26:50 Sure. Yeah.
Nicky Bulmer 00:26:51 Yeah. Just avoid that initial.
Tatiane Pires 00:26:55 Exactly. You’re totally, totally right. Thank you.
Nicky Bulmer 00:26:58 The scary thing about interviews. Because as much as, you know, somebody could get really excited about, like, D&D or, you know, acting or whatever, your your experience in general, you know, it only takes one thing to have them go. Oh, and then the tone is set the other direction. It’s it’s such a fickle process, you know, and so much of it is, you know, the personalities of the people involved and, you know, the interviewers willingness to, you know, understand that everybody is different and you don’t have to like them for them to do a good job. But not everybody’s willing to introspect in that way.
Michelle Frechette 00:27:34 Yeah. Very true. Yeah. So I want to try to keep this to the right amount of time. Because people start to tune out after a little while if they give a podcast gets too long. So let’s, flip over to looking at your resume then. And, I’ve already reviewed it in advance, and we’ve made some changes before Nicky even saw it. But from an HR perspective, I’m very curious to see what Nicky has to say.
Nicky Bulmer 00:27:57 All right. I’m going to go over the strengths of the that I saw first. The format was super easy to read. I was able to glance through it and and see what I wanted to see. So a nice, clear format. I might highlight a little bit. And let me back up because I’m still on strengths. You did highlight that you have experience working remotely, and I thought that was really good. You show like significant experience over ten years of experience working in WordPress and software development.
Nicky Bulmer 00:28:30 So you you have a wealth of knowledge that you’d be bringing to the table, and it was obvious in your resume. So that was good. And there’s like a nice amount of diversity in your work history. It’s not just developing this one thing. It’s front end. It’s back end. You know, you’ve done testing, so whatever role you put in, you have that ability to empathize with the other teams. Like as a developer, you know, you already have an empathy for the testers because you know what they’re going through. So they’re you know, I think that’s a really good thing to bring to the table. For improvements, your summary is huge. That is a huge summary. And you highlighted so many words in it. Honestly, when I’m looking at a resume, I don’t need highlighted words in it. It almost begins to feel condescending. If there’s like, you know, I can I can read it, I can pick out what’s important, I would move, I would take that out.
Nicky Bulmer 00:29:33 Move your skill set up underneath your summary. And then you’re highlighting all of those same words, in a different way and clean up that skill section. So it’s, you had just a a list of skills. With your diverse amount of skills, it would be beneficial to do some bullet points and do programming languages and then put your PHP and your JavaScript and your CSS, and then and your frameworks and tools and WordPress, MySQL, jQuery, you know, and one thing that you didn’t add and we kind of talked about it when we were talking about your extracurriculars. Make sure that you add skills for your soft skills, you know, collaboration, flexibility across time zones. You know, your attention to detail and, you know, use things that can be quantified by your work experience. Like, you know, if you’re a tester, you you have to have a good attention to detail. So put a few soft skills in there too. And I noted this all out on the document that I’ll have Michelle send to you, too, so that you’ll have all of it written down for you also.
Tatiane Pires: Thank you.
Nicky Bulmer 00:30:41 Yeah. Of course. Work experience after ten years. Going back? Unless it’s something like super life changing or something that might not be reflected later. I don’t pay a lot of attention to to previous to ten years. And if you have a ten year, that’s less than like a year, put why you left the company. You know, if it was a contract role, just note that it was a contract role. And then when I’m going, it’s not a red flag to me anymore. I’m like, oh, that’s a contract where it was expected to be short or she was laid off. It was, you know, it was expected or, you know. But yeah, that those are pretty much the, the list of, of criticisms, not a whole lot of criticisms. Do a portfolio you have over ten years of experience doing development. I want to see a portfolio more than I want to see a list of domains that you’ve worked on. So do or even just like a GitHub repository where I can look at some of this code that you’ve done or something just easy to link out. So yeah, any questions that you had about any of that feedback? I kind of just bled it out there.
Tatiane Pires 00:31:56 About the portfolio. There was, there have been sites that were when I worked as a contractor for other companies. So I, it’s their portfolio. I’m not sure if I could add that to my portfolio so that that’s the question. Can I, can I do that, can I add like screenshots of that? And, oh, this a similar situation happens with code. Working with repositories that are not my own. So how how do you suggest I work with that?
Nicky Bulmer 00:32:35 Yeah, that makes it a little difficult, because everybody has their own set of rules about what you can share and what’s private. The not compete and and privacy stuff. So really it would depend on what your agreement with them is. But even if you can’t share the code, you can say, this is what I worked on on this website, and these are the languages that I’ve used and, and just include it in there and that way or like you said, you can do a screenshot of of something that you’ve built or designed, a UX that you put together or and just like a brief explanation about what you did will go miles, even if you can’t share the full code to it because nobody’s going to be reading through the full code anyway.
Nicky Bulmer 00:33:22 If you have just a few samples that show how you, how you write, note and organize and everything. It’ll go a long way.
Michelle Frechette 00:33:31 Now, I have a question for you. Tatiane is, I know that English is not your first language, but you’re perfectly fluent in it. But do you find it challenging to interview in English as opposed to in Portuguese?
Tatiane Pires 00:33:45 At this point in my career, no. Because it’s been like several years that I’ve surrounded myself with English, with podcasts, when I’m watching movies or TV shows, they are in English, and if I can, without any subtitles at all. So I worked in order to get to a point where English comes naturally, as naturally as I can. To me, both listening and speaking.
Michelle Frechette 00:34:15 Excellent. If somebody uses a word that you haven’t heard before in English, how comfortable are you asking them to explain it in a different way?
Tatiane Pires 00:34:26 Oh. That’s interesting. I would try to get it by context. I would try to open a tab here and check the dictionary, and then I would probably then ask. Oh, what do you mean by that word. Could you explain that?
Michelle Frechette 00:34:46 Because I realized I asked you the I used the word amenable, which I don’t think is that foreign, but a lot of times that’s not a natural word that people use a lot. And I was like, you answered perfectly well. So either you already knew the word or you took it from context. But that kind of made me wonder about how you would do that if you didn’t know a word like that. Yeah. Very good.
Tatiane Pires 00:35:04 Yeah. And that’s, one of the benefits back then, I saw when I developed this strategy to surround myself listening, English. That would give me a lot more flexibility to adapt and to understand different words.
Michelle Frechette 00:35:24 Absolutely.
Nicky Bulmer 00:35:28 It’s a good point to touch on, though, Michelle. I do interview a lot of people from all corners of the earth, and some folks struggle a little bit more with English. Or, you know, they don’t struggle with English, but they have very thick accents. So you might encounter that as an interviewee as well, where your interviewer has a very thick accent. And some of the things that I found that work really well is repeating back what you heard for clarification. Like, so what you’re asking is this is that correct? And and if it’s not, then people are usually pretty good about explaining it. And, you know, taking it down to bite sized pieces so that you can find that middle ground.
Michelle Frechette 00:36:10 So it’s great feedback. Yeah. Good advice.
Nicky Bulmer 00:36:17 What other questions do you have for us? We kind of move through really quickly this time.
Michelle Frechette 00:36:23 That’s awesome though. Yeah.
Tatiane Pires 00:36:26 Oh. Okay. Let me. Oh. What do you think about my cover letter? I, I try to make a template, specifically for WordPress, and then I would, review the, job requirements, review companies information culture, and try to tailor that WordPress template even further to the specific company I’m applying. What, would you suggest on on for the cover letter as well?
Nicky Bulmer 00:37:07 You didn’t submit one to me to review.Right? We’re just talking about cover letters because I didn’t think I got one.
Michelle Frechette 00:37:13 I think I uploaded it to you, but maybe. Maybe I missed it. I’ll get. I’ll send it to you right now if I still have it. Hold on. So you can pull it up. But. Yeah. So.
Nicky Bulmer 00:37:21 Well, the.
Michelle Frechette 00:37:22 Oh it’s there if you scroll up in our conversation just a little bit, Nicky. You’ll see it in Slack.
Nicky Bulmer 00:37:29 Oh, it’s in Slack. I was looking for the link on the the stuff that was submitted, so. While I’m looking for this, though, just to touch on cover letters, in general, a lot of people aren’t even requiring cover letters anymore. And I have to be honest, I don’t read cover letters unless it’s a it’s a very close tie between somebody. I mostly just glance over a cover letter. And a lot of times I find that people that do cover letters, they’re more harmful to them than they are good because they don’t tailor it to the company so that you tailor it to the company is so important.
Nicky Bulmer 00:38:08 I had one, that I remember because it was so out there, comparatively speaking, where the guy was like, I’m so excited to work at a marijuana dispensary. And I was like, oh, well, thank you for saving my time. That is not us at all.
Tatiane Pires 00:38:25 Wow.
Michelle Frechette 00:38:27 He forgot to update it for that company.
Nicky Bulmer 00:38:30 Yeah. And but then he went on and to describe, you know, his very intimate knowledge with different strains of marijuana and, you know, all of the different things about growing it and techniques. And, and I was like, you’re you’ll have a very good career at a company that specializes in that with that knowledge.
Michelle Frechette 00:39:00 But not us. And I assume you found her, her resume or her cover letter?
Nicky Bulmer 00:39:03 I did. Do you want to.
Michelle Frechette 00:39:04 Get a quick.
Nicky Bulmer 00:39:04 Do you want to take over while I peek at it?
Michelle Frechette 00:39:06 Sure. For sure. So I didn’t actually give you much feedback on your cover letter when you and I met last week. And for anybody who’s listening, WPIncludes.me is a mentor mentee, opportunity for women in tech to especially WordPress to mentor each other.
Michelle Frechette 00:39:24 And so that’s our relationship is that I’m mentoring you. But I also have never hired somebody in tech, so I didn’t want to, like, look at the cover letter and go, oh, that’s good or that’s bad or whatever, because I thought, you know, Nicky and Misty would probably have a better opportunity. The one thing that I would have given feedback on, and I’ll see if Nicky agrees or disagrees, is it’s a very dense cover letter. So you have a lot of information in there and a lot of links to like basically you have like a portfolio included in your cover letter as opposed to put on your resume. And I’m going to guess that she’s going to suggest you move a lot of that over to the resume or to the resume itself.
Nicky Bulmer 00:40:05 When I look at a cover letter, I don’t want a rehashing of everything that’s in the resume. And you have done a lot of pointing out of previous roles and experience in previous roles. When I’m looking at a cover letter, what I want to know is why your experience is good for the company.
Nicky Bulmer 00:40:24 I want to see that you looked at the role and you looked at the company, and I want to see you associate your skills with the duties that are posted for the role. So it’s I wouldn’t say it’s a bad cover letter if the grammar in it is good. It’s well formatted. You know, it’s the extra portfolio information. But it’s basically a rehashing of your resume and I’m already reading your resume, so I don’t need to necessarily read it in the cover letter also.
Michelle Frechette 00:40:53 So I’m going to suggest something and see if if Nicky agrees or disagrees. If you’re going to put something in the cover letter and you’ve got a lot of links and things to things you’ve already done. I would say find one of those projects you worked on that you’re most proud of and that could that the the what you learned and the growth from that project would suit you well to the to the position you’re applying for. So you say, you know, one of my career highlights was XYZ. And what I learned there could work at, you know, your company because of these direct connections.
Nicky Bulmer 00:41:25 Yeah. And the cover letter is a great place to tie some of those extracurricular. I can’t speak, I can’t say that their hobbies, curricular skills into, you know, your job and show that you’re still serious about the job and why those are good, such as, you know, your your acting and improv would be good for the role or, you know, DMing and how that is beneficial to, just to bring some, some of your personality. So basically, what you’re doing in a cover letter is telling me what you want me to know about who you are. So if you throw a lot of information at me, I’m going to pick out what I want. I see, but if you tell me exactly what you want me to know about you, that’s what I’m going to look at. That’s what I’m going to know. So sometimes less is more in that case.
Michelle Frechette 00:42:15 Yeah. Makes sense to me. Cool. I’m happy. I think that we’ve got some really good feedback. Tatiane and I will be able to look at some of this in our next one on one session, and, and, and, I’ll be able to help you with that. And we can continue to refine those things as you’re looking for jobs. Do you have any questions as we wrap up today? Tatiane?
Tatiane Pires 00:42:39 Oh, I. Oh, let me see. I think, I have a lot of work to do, so I, I’m, I’m really thankful for your insights and suggestions.
Michelle Frechette 00:42:55 Fantastic.
Nicky Bulmer 00:42:56 In closing, I would just say you have a wonderful wealth of experience, and you’re very well spoken, and you write very clearly. And these are all wonderful things. Don’t be afraid to tell us about it. Don’t be afraid to talk about specific languages that you’ve used. Don’t be afraid to, you know, get into some of those more granular details. So, you know, when I’m asking about your process for developing a plugin. You know, don’t be afraid to say, I used JavaScript to do this because I like, you know, this framework, whatever. You know. Don’t be afraid to to show who you are and what you know. Because you you have a lot there to share, you know, confidence.
Tatiane Pires 00:43:46 Yeah, I will certainly work on that. Thank you.
Nicky Bulmer 00:43:49 Yeah. Yeah. Of course.
Michelle Frechette 00:43:51 I think a lot of this feedback is good for all of our listeners. I think that’s one of that’s the purpose of the show is the things that we critique positive and, you know, things that could use some work. Let’s say, are things that everybody who’s listening could take into account for the way they interview and the way they write their resume. So thank you for the vulnerability to share that today and not only help yourself, but help others along the way. Nicky, I’ll let you bring it home.
Nicky Bulmer 00:44:17 Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time and your vulnerability. As Michelle said, and thank you so much for being here. Hopefully, like like Michelle already stated, she pretty much brought it home already. You know, we we really just want to help people have the best chance to get jobs out there. So if you do have questions that you want to ask and you don’t want to be on the show, don’t be afraid to reach out.
Nicky Bulmer 00:44:42 For that either. You know, I’m happy to answer questions or if you you come back and go, hey, I don’t understand this feedback or, you know, I change this and I want to see what you think. Let me know. I’m happy to take another look and help out. You know, I just I really want people to have the best chance to put their best foot forward. So, you know, thank you for helping me bring that to people.
Michelle Frechette 00:45:03 And thanks for having me as a guest host today, Nicky.
Tatiane Pires 00:45:05 So lovely. Thank you.
Nicky Bulmer 00:45:06 Yeah, thank you for stepping in for Misty. I appreciate it.
Michelle Frenchette: My pleasure.
Nicky Bulmer: So all right, have a wonderful day, everybody. Thanks for joining us.
Michelle Frechette 00:45:14 We’ll see everybody in the next episode. Bye.
Tatiane Pires 00:45:15 Bye.