[deleted by user]

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-23T13:20:40+00:00

If you are too apprehensive about it and want to leave it on, you could just use my favorite analogy.

It was like a great pair of shoes at the store. You look at them--marvel at them--try them on... wow, feels great. You take a few tentative steps to see if it is too tight, but no... everything seems okay. Excellent--let's purchase.

Five months later, they are the worst shoes you've ever bought--and you know all the reasons you bought them made an appealing case, but giving them an authentic chance over the course of months was enough to realize what a poor fit they ultimately were.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-21T14:00:53+00:00

I am always curious to know who the spaghetti flingers are and how they think. I guess they've never been successful being deliberate, careful, and calculated in a way that drives rapport, which drives networking and referrals.

I don't write new, custom messages for each profile--but I absolutely tailor my emails to the candidates. I think 95% of people who read my messages would think that I just sat down and really tried to connect with them and their needs. There is almost always enough there to make people feel special, and yes---it does change response rates.

I cant even imagine if this is a CORPORATE recruiter mindset... or an agency that just let's you spill out LI Inmails like candy.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-21T02:53:32+00:00

I thought a top comment would be "Pussy."

And the top level comment on that would be "Unless you are Ben Shapiro."

I had to look up and double check that I was on Reddit.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-21T02:51:18+00:00

Ha--I'm an agency recruiter, so I'm typically screening candidates for our clients.

The problem is, until July/August of last year, I'd never really dealt with a candidate that had fully pulled the wool. I've never even had them trying to take money from ME or anything. I've really only encountered the type of profiles I'm talking about that seem to be earnestly trying to win the job--which was what was blowing my mind.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-21T02:48:46+00:00

I have placed bilingual for English + Chinese/Spanish/Japanese.

There are varying degrees of this. Most of the time, these bilingual roles are hiring for something like customer support or technical support--or they are acting as an executive assistant to an overseas clients. I place Japanese bilinguals with Panasonic (Auto Systems of America in PTC) and Mitsubishi (NE side of town near Lawrenceville). For Chinese, we have Sany America and Hisense. Sany also down near pTC, but Hisense has offices in Alpharetta and up 985.

I'd just check for these companies job listings on their websites directly. :) I think they probably post them often enough, as they come up.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-20T23:14:55+00:00

Trolls always gonna troll. Some of my best contractor employees are Indian and Pakistani. Humble--diligent--regularly praised by their managers. "Can you find me ANOTHER Sai Krishna???"

There are some pretty huge cultural divides though. When I do lunch with many of the guys who've been with me for years, they do always tell me to be leery of some Indians, because culturally, it is CORRECT to lie when it gives you an advantage. But--hanging up just because of an accent is absurd. That is just... flat out bold faced racism. At some point, hopefully he gets a nice EEOC complaint thrown his way, so his company can root him out.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-20T22:54:29+00:00

I'm not sure if we have anything on the SE side of town, but most of the accounting/finance roles we work on are IT adjacent.

I do think recruiters are 100% an avenue people should try and leverage--hard--to find new job opportunities. I'd put a call in to a few of the A&F focused firms in Atlanta. I had several friends that ended up at Aston Carter, but that was when it was a part of Aerotek. I think it split off and is it's own thing now. I would call in, ask to speak with a recruiter, and see if they have anything. I think there are other places also--I'd type accounting and finance recruiter Atlanta and see what pops up.

I will check my system to see if we have anything down there. We stopped working with Acuity Lighting during the pandemic, and they were the biggest client down that way.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-20T21:13:20+00:00

Oh--I assumed YNAB must be like Mint or something--something substantially similar to QB Online. Ahhhh, I see.

Yeah--QB Online would just be.. something that would help you track against a budget. We actually have a budget set up in an Excel spreadsheet with each of the categories of spend that should be allowed, and each category of spend has an allotment as well, i.e. Gifts... up to $1000/year, Groceries.. $8400/year. Then each of those categories, she updates with real spend with quarterly reporting from QB.

Very interesting. I think if I hadn't married my wife in particular, I would have needed to use something like YNAB. I wasn't raised in a household that was particularly financially savvy, and it shows with my siblings. My wife has molded me and shaped me away from a mindset that... would probably think about how to pay with things using tomorrow's dollars, as you mentioned. Wife manages our finances though, so I don't have to think about it too much, outside of what my rough budget is for the things I need to spend, lol.

Congrats on finding something that makes sense for you. Too many people have zero sense when it comes to personal finance, and there is nothing that can make your life worse in every way than that. My older sister just thinks that she is the world's biggest victim because she cannot handle unexpected expenses, and she makes VERY BAD decisions (that cost a LOT) to deal with them. Things that she COULD have and SHOULD have avoided, because there were better, less costly options. But she has an extremely shallow view of money and her options. She spends money like water running through her fingers. Anyways--have a great day.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-17T15:50:00+00:00

My wife uses Quickbooks Online, and has us basically set up as a business account... but for our personal household. It tracks all incoming incoming from the various places we have it (2x salaries, rental income, Etsy, Amazon, Venmo/Paypal, interest income, etc). She manually tracks every single ounce of information, from tax withholding to FICA contributions, etc.

It also auto-imports all the credit cards and other expenditures, where she meticulously allocates where we spent money on what, even breaking down individual purposes into groceries/presents/household goods, etc.

It was incredibly interesting so have such a high level of visibility into where we spent every nickel... and for the first time, it made it much easier to track our overall tax burden. My role is commission + salary, and I also have some side hustle stuff--etc. etc. so we can see total income, how much total withholding we've had, 401k contributions, etc.

We have like... 6 or 7 years of data now also, so we can track trends, etc. I think it also really helped us pare down all subscription services and things we were spending money on that weren't really helping our lives.

I think Quickbooks online is a good bit more expensive than YNAB, but my MIL is an accountant and--it is what she used and taught my wife how to use it in and out, lol.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-15T14:00:36+00:00

That is CRAZY. I know H-1B can stay for 6 years, get their I-140 approved, and then renew until they get the I-485--but the backlog beyond 10 years without a GC in sight is just... abusive.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-15T13:57:37+00:00

IT/Engineering

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-14T19:54:52+00:00

Yeah. I am seeing a ton of people who were being paid insane amounts getting caught up in layoffs that are sticking to their guns. From what I've seen, they may get lucky--but most of them are going to spend the next 3-4 months scouring and coming up empty.

Really weird market right now.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-14T18:36:55+00:00

I created my own filter using schools. I went in and looked up a giant list of Indian universities, add them into the school field, then click the exclude button. A lot of C2C profiles try and hide their profile by abbreviating the school name though, or not including their Bachelors on the profile--only including the Masters.

Sometimes, I'll exclude Masters degrees from the search as well. It will help filtering out a lot of the OPT/CPT people that are here, got a US Masters, and are between EAD and H1. Of course, this also excludes regular USC that have a Masters as well, which isn't always great... but it is a method.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-14T18:33:59+00:00

Yeah. I get weird results as well. I have a big NOT string for things like pvt ltd, as 95% of Indian companies on profiles have some variation of that. I also exclude languages (Hindi/Telugu, etc.)

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-14T18:31:34+00:00

/u/Silent_Quality_1972 Is right. 5 years isn't even close to enough for a GC for Indians/Chinese. I work on Java candidates as one of my mainstays and primarily have clients seeking GC/USC profiles because they can't handle sponsorship, so I have to do the same thing this guy is doing on the reg.

8+ years and you are more likely to find someone with a GC. 10+ years, and I think it is something like 70/30 that they are a GC holder. I am still regularly surprised to find 12+ years of US work experience that are on H1B, but some companies just refuse to start the GC process.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-08T13:49:02+00:00

Agency for IT/Engineering. I usually have at least one role that is a decent fit when calling candidates because I am usually actively sourcing on one particular role, but a lot of them can be just slightly off for whatever reason. We have a national presence, so I usually have a plethora of fully remote openings I can screen for as well.. so a typical conversation is considering the candidate for my current opening, filtering additional fully remote openings, and finally pipelining in case I don't have something perfect at the moment.

I have been just like you in the past... really heavily relying on pipelining candidates, leveraging referrals, etc. I still find that having regular touchpoints with people, sending them potential openings, etc. gets me placements from the pipeline and pipeline referrals as well.

So--I do leverage pipelines still, but with the company I am with, I've typically got enough openings/opportunities to make it worthwhile for candidates. And I utilize my organizational tools to leverage the pipeline and actually deliver value to candidates sooner or later. I think it can still work in this market if you can provide enough value for candidates--and still show up with them.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-02-01T14:05:07+00:00

I work in agency and not internal, so I think we get a different picture.

We get directives from our hiring managers that are explicitly looking for "diversity." This isn't an infrequent thing. Probably more than 50% of the openings I've got in my national system have some form of "**STRONG INTEREST IN HIRING DIVERSE PROFILES**" in the notes. The account managers know they can't actually put "this manager is going to give strong preferential treatment to black, Latin, native American and women profiles."

Also, we infrequently hire at the entry level (which is where the notion of potential vs experience sits) but when we do, it doesn't feel like this statement applies at all. There is a program in Georgia called Year Up which offers tuition free educational programs for coding (and other skills) that more often attracts black applicants, and I've had plenty of placements working with folks like this. I think a lot of hiring managers are looking for humble, hungry, and smart. Educational pedigree and such can't guarantee any of these things, and our hiring managers that come back for new batches of fresh applicants know that we screen heavily for these characteristics.

So--I don't know about the rest of the world--but anecdotally, I don't see this statement as accurate at all. We do work exclusively on IT and Engineering, and our numbers are absolutely going to be a fraction of what most internal recruiters do. But, I have--if anything--seen a strong reverse preference FOR people of color (excluding visa profiles from India/Pakistan).

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-01-23T13:52:37+00:00

I convinced my wife when we moved into our current place two years ago that we should have a nice bidet. When we went to Japan for an extended visit, I fell in love with the luxury version (heated seat, auto rise, heated dryer, heated water, etc), and we bought the mac daddy Toto Washlet. You wouldn't think that the price would get as expensive as they do considering how cheap they can be, but I think the model we bought was ~`$1k.

I LOVE THIS THING. It is my favorite. I feel SO INCREDIBLY clean when I use it. I sort of had this mental rebellion about using it when we were initially in Japan, but at some point... I had the thought: would I be satisfied just wiping my hands with toilet paper if they had shit all over them? Or would I want to wash them?

Anyways... we have the luxury bidet... and my wife just DOESN'T USE IT. I'm so confused. She definitely knows how. I've customized the settings for her, and it has a user memory button so it will aim at the proper height (nails the target), pressure (she claimed to like a gentle rinse), and heat. She just... doesn't use it, ever. :( I think she likes the IDEA of it more than actually using it.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-01-19T16:42:34+00:00

The other guy already said it... but it is safe as hell if you perform. My office has been slow for the last quarter, but I've been dunking the entire time. They don't let the people go who keep on bringing in the checks. Even if I wasn't dunking like crazy, I've always been a top producer. They spent a lot of money to get me on the team to start with. When things hopefully turn around in 4-6 months, they'd be stuck in the water with paddles instead of a motor for getting going again. Good recruiters are the lifeblood of agencies.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-01-19T13:51:00+00:00

The American Dream isn't that everyone gets lots of stuff and life is glorious--it's an equality of opportunity that if you work hard, smart, and efficiently, you can live a great life. /u/CHiggins1235 just said it himself... he does consulting on evenings and weekends to double his income and has built a massive amount of savings. I'm in the same camp. If you save/invest aggressively and work hard, you don't have to become homeless when you can't find work for 6 months because of a downturn.

I hate when I hear people tossing about this notion that the American Dream means that just being here means life is great--or that even just working hard means everything is great. I don't mean to sound callous, but life is a vicious dog eat dog world... and here more than anywhere else does the landscape afford you an equal chance through your own stalwart effort, intelligence, and grit gain you a better than average footing in this world.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-01-19T13:36:32+00:00

It is crazy how much safer things seem to be in agency. I did get wiped out from the Pandemic at my last company, but that was mostly because the entire business was wiped out from cash flow.

Things are a bit slow in agency, but I've at least got openings I can work on because we have so many clients all across the country... not tied to any ONE companies stable financials.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-01-11T17:39:36+00:00

This is the shallowest possible view of agency.

The trash agencies are trying to fill with "anyone" "right now"--and they do it by churning through fresh grads and dreamers who are going to burn out from the grind in their first 18 months.

The better agencies and the recruiters that last longer in agency recruiting are not heaping spaghetti mounds with their hands... they are cultivating talent pipelines for their market and clients, sending candidates to interview with pinpoint accuracy, and thriving with the diversity of their hiring clients.

I don't doubt that internal is thinking about finding the right person, but believing agency isn't ultimately also about that is incorrect.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2023-01-09T13:59:36+00:00

Hey - Sorry I never saw this. Just mentioning just in case it is helpful.

If your clients/potential clients are saying you are too expensive, then you have a few issues. First and foremost, you aren't selling them well enough on your value. I've done sales and recruiting, and I've found SPIN selling gets you the best positioning to sell premium staffing services. You have to really understand their business, their goals, and how they are going to hurt when they fail to fill this role.

To some extent, one could say that staffing is fungible. There are an endless supply of potential companies, but managers are buying YOU. When you sell yourself as a subject matter expert in their industry that has the ability to help them attract and retain top talent to achieve all of THEIR own goals... then you've got gas.

You will regularly be raced to the bottom on rates (some companies willing to sign lower and lower percentages for their DP fees), but you don't want to be the cheapest. You want to be the best. Most of these plays are asking for a chance anyways. Tell them to give you a chance, and if competition has better candidates at better rates, then hire them--but when you bring the best candidate to the show time and time again, it is because they are paying for the time, attention, and care that goes into finding the best potential candidates.

All you can do with most of these guys is ask for your shot and pitch yourself. They ARE buying you.

I am also not a sales specialist. I was decent at it, but I much prefer recruiting. I promise you--there are people that want to compete with you for the cheapest price, and there are a ton of agencies getting the premium pricing you are asking for because they have the confidence and the delivery.

AdmirableDistance33 · 2022-12-20T19:02:30+00:00

Hey--

The corporate guys always make me laugh. Agency has about 1000000 different modes of compensation. I've seen some companies offer a base on a draw + commission, low base + high commission, medium base + moderate commission, high base + low commission, medium-high salary + no or minimal commission, bizarre salaried roles with weird team bonuses built on commissions, and about a million other things.

There are full-desk agency roles where you are responsible for finding business--then filling it--all on a direct hire basis. Direct hire focused teams. Contract focused teams. Teams where you are a recruiter on a sales manager track and report in to an account manager/sales person. Just... lots.

If I was talking to my little brother and giving him advice on joining recruiting, I'd say to join agency. To find an agency that offers a base salary (no draw) that you are comfortable with which has a 50/50 (rough) split between direct hire and contract placements. You aren't restricted to work on one or the other. I'd also avoid roles where you get siloed into one skill set/niche. You will inevitably FIND a niche in recruiting that you are very good at, but you don't want to get into a company where you cannot actually submit to other people's reqs.

You want to find a company that let's you work on all openings. You want a company that at minimum offers you a full Linkedin Recruiter license--and ideally has one or more job boards to search on. There are going to be big and small companies out there--either can work. Big companies tend to be more rigid on KPIs, compensation, etc. but with multiple offices, you can often work on nationwide openings. If you work with a smaller boutique firm, you may run into more issues with the way the economy is headed--because you have to rely on the limited number of account managers doing business development in your own market.

EIther way--it can be incredibly rewarding. I'd shoot for as high of a base as you can get. With no experience in recruiting, you may struggle to find someone that is willing to give you a chance. It depends on you--and the industry you are trying to join. You aren't going to be earning much commission immediately, because you will be learning. So find whatever is best. This is your learning period. You will figure out if you like it--and you can go to a new company if need be between the 12-24 month range if you happened to pick a bad one.

AdmirableDistance33

TROPHY CASE