Career Warrior Podcast #313) Still Struggling to Get Hired? Listen to This | With Reno Perry

Episode Transcript

Reno Perry 0:00
At the end of the day, you said you’re making the decision, you need to make the final call. It’s not completely replacing the work you need to do. It’s assisting you in a new way that wasn’t possible before in terms of doing a lot of these menial administrative tasks, I think is where we’re at today.

Chris Villanueva 0:19
Welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast. And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life.

Still struggling to get hired? Well, you’re not going to want to miss this paramount career warrior podcast episode because we’re going to cover all things job strategy and get deep into things like LinkedIn, contract work and other things that I know many job seekers are asking you about in this day and age. Today, I brought on Reno Perry, Founder at Wiseful. With over 200,000 followers on LinkedIn, you may have already seen Reno’s inspirational writing for job seekers, or you may have even used his famous Layoff List, which has connected thousands of people impacted by layoffs.

Here’s some of Reno’s background as told on his LinkedIn profile:

A first-generation college student born into a working-class family outside of Chicago, I know all too well the challenges of finding a job and navigating a professional career. I had no connections, no wealth, or “that one family friend” that could get me a job.

Since then, I’ve sold millions of dollars in SaaS products, advised executives from start-ups to large enterprises, led teams, and worked at some cool companies like LinkedIn, Fortune 500 Stanley Black & Decker, and the #1 mobile-coaching platform, BetterUp.

 Now, I’m on a mission to help others realize their potential and democratize access to the best companies & jobs. I’ve been fortunate to help thousands of professionals land a job they love…but there’s still much work to do.

So I love this. I love this background and this mission. And so I think that in this episode, we’re going to bring in some of that background that Reno has, and we’re going to discuss, I think some really solid tools and strategies that you can implement even this week to move your job search forward. So without further ado, here’s episode 313 of the Career Warrior Podcast. Reno, welcome to the show.

Reno Perry 2:24
Hey, Chris, how’s it going? Thanks for having me.

Chris Villanueva 2:26
Pretty good, man. I’m glad to have you on the Career Warrior Podcast finally. And as I mentioned earlier, I think you have a really awesome background. I mentioned this to you before I hit record, but I’m a background nerd. I love hearing about the history of the podcast guests who come on. I would love to hear a little bit about your journey from first generation college student to your current role in helping job seekers. And let’s give a little bit of context for people as they listen in.

Reno Perry 2:54
Yeah, for sure. I haven’t told this story in a while so it’ll be good to go back all those years. I think I have it on my LinkedIn profile but it’s been a while since I’ve shared it. But yeah, you know, thank you for introducing me as a first gen college student and I was really in the dark. I think at that time, like a lot of people just naturally are if you’re in your college years, or just transitioning from college to the professional world. But for me, being a first gen, it was especially tough just coming from a background where nobody in my family had any idea what it meant to go to college or what happens after because I come from a blue collar, working class family, everyone’s working in manufacturing type jobs. This was way new territory and so I was definitely learning as I was going along a lot of trial by fire.

And that’s really what led to what the kind of work I do today in terms of helping other folks in their career helping people find jobs they love was really a product of just having a really terrible experience. I think as a student and then early career professional and having made so many mistakes and learned the hard way. It was really an opportunity for me once I did learn the right way to progress in my career network and find jobs that I get really excited about Isom, well, why don’t I try to pass it down to folks that may be in a similar spot or are trying to answer the same questions I was at that time. So, I think that’s probably the driving force of what I do today and the founding of my company Wiseful which is helping connect job seekers to those kinds of job opportunities. But yeah, I think that’s the short short of it in terms of what led from then to now.

Chris Villanueva 4:38
I love it so much. And I can tell you have a really good heart and you’re in it for like all the right reasons. There’s so many different reasons to get into this space. And like for me, I love helping folks who are struggling and folks who may not be getting those results because I myself have felt like the pain and like the persistence needed to get through the job search. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of have different factors when it comes to a successful job search and a lot of different reasons why someone may not be having the job search that they want. And so what we try to do as career professionals is help those individuals the best way we can and share some of our story along the way. So I got asked about the layoffs list. I think that’s interesting and unique, different than any other guest here. So how did that come to be before we launch into some of these strategies?

Reno Perry 5:25
Yeah, great question. So the layoff list really started in early summer of 2022 and it was a result of the layoffs that started to happen again, I think they were early 2020 to Q1 or Q2 is when companies started to do layoffs. Again, we of course, all remember what happened in 2020 but we were seeing this happen again. And we just had an idea and said, “You know what? So my company wise for me and the team, we came up with this idea.” And just I don’t want to say it was half hearted, but it was really off the cuff in terms of, “Why don’t we just start a list and, yeah, help a few people out maybe people in our network we know. And we can promote this and I have a little bit of a network on LinkedIn, we’ll see where it goes.”

And we wanted to start this, we didn’t have any expectation for what it would turn into but where it’s gotten to now is we’ve had over 20,000 people that ended up signing up for this list. And over the course, since we started this, we’ve had over 6,000 companies that have signed up to use it to hire talent and we’ve had thousands of people that have gotten jobs. Thousands more than have gotten interviews from it. So it really turned into this huge thing that we didn’t anticipate would occur and so we decided to just keep it going. We said let’s keep updating it, let’s promote it when we can. It’s a really took on a life of its own. But it’s been a passion project, I think, of mine over the last year plus or so and our hope is that we would not need to continue using that list and that there wouldn’t be a list. You know, we’ve done some pretty good work with that. Yeah. So I mean, that’s a little backstory on how we started, it still exists today. We have a lot of folks on there that are looking for work. And we’re just going to keep keep promoting it and helping job seekers out as long as these layoffs continue.

Chris Villanueva 7:13
Awesome. Well, you’re doing great work, man. And the content in the things you’re putting out for job seekers, I think is great, too. And I want to discuss a few of those that we even had a conversation about before this recording things like building your network on LinkedIn and how to use the platform effectively. But one topic that sounds almost like a side tangent, but we covered it earlier was this idea of contract work and jobs to delay it. Yeah, I’m getting, you know, people reaching out saying that, like how do I include contract work on my resume? Or, you know, is this something that I should continue taking, but or continue doing in my career, but what is your general take on contract work in careers,

Reno Perry 7:54
I think there’s a couple of ways I look at contract work, there is taking contract work, because you’re in a situation where financially, it may be just based on the availability of jobs out there, it may be the easiest, or the best option for you that’s right in front of you. And I think that’s okay, if you’re in a situation that’s untenable, and you need that financial support to take that on. And then there’s the other side of it, the other way I look at contract work, which could help with that first way is contract work that helps advance some of the goals or is aligned with some of the skills you’re trying to learn, that will lead to something better than contract or maybe full time work or a career opportunity. So looking at it sort of as a stepping stone and that’s okay, as well.

I’ll share some anecdotes just from the layoff list I mentioned earlier, we surveyed the thousands of people on the list and had been tracking how many people have been getting jobs, how long has it been taking people who are laid off to get a job. And about the average what we’re seeing right now, which has actually improved drastically since last year, about three months for the people who have landed jobs and three bots. But to that point, I’ve also seen a lot of folks above the average where it’s taking him four, five, six, or sevent months to find a job. And then there are still a lot of people who have not found a job yet, are up to seven, eight months now in terms of haven’t been able to find a job.

So I think the story there is really, it can be unpredictable in terms of when you’re landing your next gig if you do get laid off. In a lot of those situations, people had replied saying, “Thank God I took on this contract work because I did not anticipate I would be out of work for seven months until I found my next full time gig” as so many of those messages, hundreds I would say, Chris, that I got and people saying it really helped financially but also it gave me something to talk about in terms of what was I doing from that gap in terms of being laid off before an opportunity and so you’re not just getting paid but you’re picking up skills and I think if you can find a way to do that, that there’s nothing wrong with it. I support it and think that it can be helpful, particularly in that kind of situation.

Chris Villanueva 10:03
Great advice. And listen, folks, like contract work, in my opinion is one of the most malleable or one of the best things that you can include on your resume to shape the resume the way you want to just because there’s so much that goes into contract work, a lot of it is like results oriented, so keeping track of those results and sharing that on our resumes. And I think it’s a powerful thing. So check out that episode, if you haven’t listened to it already. But again, I would echo that amazing advice you’ve given here, LinkedIn, transitioning over to LinkedIn, because you have some good advice in this arena as well. So one of the best powerful tools for job seekers, but the effectiveness varies not just based on what the profiles that these job seekers have, but also how folks are using these profiles to their advantage. So how can jobseekers best utilize LinkedIn to stand out in the sea of other users on LinkedIn? I suppose?

Reno Perry 10:57
Yeah, great question. I feel like we could do a whole episode on just optimizing your LinkedIn for the job, sir. But I’ll, I’ll try to give the the abridged version of it just based on time, you know, everything. And I don’t know if some of the listeners have heard advice on LinkedIn before. But all of it starts with the profile, your goal should be how do I optimize my profile. So I can get discovered by all these recruiters that are using LinkedIn, which at this point, depending on the stat almost 90%, majority of recruiters are using LinkedIn, whether it’s LinkedIn is variety of paid tools, or maybe they’re on free LinkedIn scanning to see who’s out there. And the only way you’re going to be discovered is if you have the right keywords and titles, so in skills and so I think that’s the first thing people should do is really take stock of am I really filling out all of the necessary skills in my skill section that the jobs I’m applying to require or have. And so it seems simple enough,

But when I coach job seekers, and I look at their skill section, they have skills that they haven’t updated in years, or it might be skills from an old job. Most people don’t know, you can put up 250 skills in your LinkedIn profile and you can actually pin the top three. And so I always say take stock of that, make sure that if you’re applying to sales, jobs or engineering jobs, look at those jobs you apply to and see what kind of skills and keywords they have. Make sure those are in your profile. Because when recruiters run searches, they’re doing it by titles, they’re doing it by keywords in skills. And so that’s a majority of how recruiters search and so think about in their shoes, what they’re searching, and apply that same thinking to your profile and the skill section, your experience section, even your LinkedIn headline, you want to keyword optimize that that’s gonna help you stand out and make the life of the recruiter easier.

Because yeah, one of the challenges I see is in, you know, we do recruiting at my own company, one of the challenges we see is when we’re, we’re running searches, or we see somebody’s profile, that that information is not in there, sometimes we’ll pass on that candidate, because we just don’t have the information we need. And we see that there’s 10, or 12 other people who do have that information. So that’s the decision that’s going on in a recruiters mind or a company or hiring managers mind when they’re scanning the den. And so super important to start with your profile. And just make sure that’s optimized before you start looking at networking or messaging people and doing all this other type of this other sort of activities, you really need to have that bow then

Chris Villanueva 13:26
I want to get your take, what’s the difference between a resume and a LinkedIn profile?

Reno Perry 13:32
Great question. So I always look at a resume as something that’s going to be a little bit more targeted, a bit more concise, to the specific jobs that you’re applying to. And so the thing about a resume is you want to make sure that the information, the bullet points, what you’re including in there, the accomplishments are relevant to the job families that you’re applying to a LinkedIn profile is a little bit more all encompassing of your career and your life, it’s a little bit more of a story that you can tell there’s more sections to do that too.

Whereas a resume, you’re pretty limited. It’s usually not something that’s going to be several pages or more endless story of your career. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to do that. In the about section, you have different ways to include media and attachments that you just aren’t able to do and the resume and the LinkedIn itself outside of the profile is a unique opportunity for you to engage with other recruiters and people on the platform that your resume is a static piece of paper just can’t do. Yeah, but the important point to consider as both are equally important, and both are complementary to each other. Because any recruiting or hiring manager, from what I’ve seen, they’re typically looking at both pieces of information, one might lead them to another or vice versa connection. Right? Exactly. And so you do want to have your resume story, but then you also want to have your LinkedIn and it linked is I think a great opportunity to add even more information to tell that story of your career.

Chris Villanueva 14:56
I love it. So in a second I want to get into AI because that’s, of course, the topic du jour, I think, especially for a lot of job seekers interested in it. But before I want to talk about who to connect with on LinkedIn, or even who to follow on LinkedIn, those may be two different questions Who to connect with versus who to follow. But I have always found there to be a quality, not quantity sort of approach when it comes to who to connect with on LinkedIn, and even you know, even job seekers who are just getting their LinkedIn profiles kicked up today who may not have many connections already, I find that there’s a lot of opportunity for those individuals to start getting those results. But what do you recommend when it comes to the actual connection, networking aspect of LinkedIn, and messaging and commenting things like that?

Reno Perry 15:44
Great points you brought up here, you’re just getting started on LinkedIn, or even if you’re a veteran on LinkedIn, or maybe you’ve had a profile for a while, but haven’t really done anything to engage or take that extra step, it’s a really good idea to connect with folks in your space, once you can learn from them, but to to make a meaningful connection. So if you’re somebody who is interested in product marketing, I would probably make a point to connect with other product marketers in your industry. So if you work in tech, it’s great to connect with other folks in tech. What are the other advantages that LinkedIn has right now is it’s increasingly become a place where people go to not just create but engaged and absorb content. Yes, you’ve been on LinkedIn, you’ve probably seen this happening, your feed where it’s not just top authors, or CEOs posting content, but you’re seeing everyday folks that are putting themselves out there and creating content. And that I think, opens up a unique opportunity for people to create relationships and engage with others.

Because if again, back to that example of Product Marketing, there’s probably some pretty high profile product marketers or maybe mid level product marketers out there at some great companies that are sharing their playbook and telling people what they’re, they’re learning. And so in addition to finding people’s profiles to connect with, I think there’s a way to search for you can also search by content and hashtags and things like that on LinkedIn to find where’s the discussion around my field? What are people talking about for product marketing, and that could be for any topic that really LinkedIn today, I see there’s a niche for everything, be involved in that conversation, find the people who are posting and engage on their posts, connect with them, so you can stay up to date on what they’re posting, that’s a really great way to not just build a connection, but you’re learning at the same time. And eventually, you’re building your network through that I’ve seen so many people that just being a part of that conversation and connecting with others, they’re meeting their next job opportunity, or they’re meeting people that have similar interests. Yes, that would be my big point in terms of how to take a step further, in terms of connecting with others.

Chris Villanueva 17:44
And leave comments to I think that the way, you’re just oh my gosh, the way you see it, so say you do comment on somebody who you’re following who’s a mega person in your space, like that person. Sure, they may not respond back, but their audience, the people that are following them, who are more than likely a targeted, relevant audience. There’s networking opportunities, right there, and the folks that see your comments and engage with you. And I’ve gotten more like more reactions and engagement, sometimes in the comments than my own posts. It’s like boom, there’s 100, you know, reactions to that and people messaging with opportunities and things like that. So I encourage jobseekers to get active there.

Reno Perry 18:24
And to your quick point in the comments. So one pack that I’ve found really worked for me is when you find those those influencers or creators who are posting content, that people who other people are commenting, not necessarily you, those are great people to connect with. And I’ve met so many connections from those folks, they’re typically the more active people on LinkedIn, you know, they want to meet other people, they want to be a part of the conversation. So I’ve met so many friends and have had opportunities open up just from finding random people who are commenting on other people’s posts. So it’s really a great tip that you mentioned there to get involved with the comments.

Chris Villanueva 18:58
Love it. Absolutely. So technology, artificial intelligence, especially will get specific there. This is transforming so many aspects, not just for job seekers, but the entire world everything. Yeah. So want to hear your thoughts on AI in regards to the job search, you know, whether you want to go with you know how job seekers can use AI to improve their job search or just speak generally about what you see happening with the landscape. I’ll let you riff off of that.

Reno Perry 19:25
So much to riff on this about, Chris, AI topic is interesting. I’m going to open with this thought. And some people might think it’s controversial, but AI is inevitable. It’s not even a devil. It’s already here. It’s being used widely. And I still see there’s still a camp of folks on social media and LinkedIn that are very anti AI. Ran they get destroys the sanctity of the job seeker employer relationship and that it’s it’s dishonest and There’s a whole list of reasons why people are against it. But here’s my take on it is companies have been using AI and automation for years. And they have all the tools, all the advantages to help streamline their processes. And for a long time, the job seekers have not had that. And if they wanted to get the upper hand or have an advantage, they’d have to pay hundreds or 1000s of dollars to a career coach or a mentor, who was helping them with that, you know, all those things that AI can do today. But now that it’s democratized, and more people can access it, I think it’s a nap, it’s a net good. And you have a lot more people that from lower means that are able to take advantage of this technology to be in a position that they maybe weren’t able to be in. And so I’m really bullish on it. We’ve already seen AI that can help with resume writing, you know, there’s even apps that will apply to jobs for you now, automatically. You know, we’ve seen some things that can create presentations that look really great.

So there’s a ton of tools out there ChatGPT is sort of the I like to call it the Swiss Army knife of AI tools. For sure. You know, it’s it’s really your own coach in your pocket. And so there’s a lot you can do there for $20 A month or even the free version. Yeah. But the one caveat, I will say to anyone thinking about AI, you know, you’d have to be living under a rock if you haven’t seen the sensation that AI is causing today. But if you’re new to AI, and you really haven’t dipped your toe in the water with these tools, I would caution the output that you see from these tools in terms of what kind of text or content gets generated. So if you’re using a resume, if you’re using a tool to help you create a resume or LinkedIn summary or a cover letter, be very careful what AI is giving you because what I’ve seen is that it’s not 100% there yet, and it can be very generic, sometimes inaccurate. And so you really want to ensure that everything you’re seeing generated from Ai, you’re carefully reviewing it, you’re tweaking it to make it your own in taking that content and mashing it into your own voice so that the uniqueness of you, it shows in what you end up submitting, ultimately to a company. So that would be my one caveat there.

Chris Villanueva 22:17
I love that. Thank you for outlining, I think all the possibilities. And I think you’re right now that it’s democratized, or at least there are things like Chachi BT that we can use to speed up our job search and make it more efficient. I think it’s a beautiful thing. And my personal take on it is, as long as we’re using it to elevate our lives and not completely replace everything. I think it can be so powerful and improve things like for instance, I use AI when it comes to some of the content kind of creation stuff to aid the process. I don’t use it to replace necessarily the creative aspects. So I’m still in charge of deciding what gets output at the end of the day and kind of steering where the content goes. But for instance, I can use ChatGPT to spit out okay, what are some possible questions, I could ask Reno for this podcast. And instead of just like reading them, boom, boom, boom, boom, what you do is you kind of use it to jog the creative process. And I’m making the decision at the end of the day based off of like gut feeling and my own experience, what ends up making the podcast. So for jobseekers, it’s the same thing. It’s like I could use it to spit out a cover letter, or something like that. But if I just say, hey, write a cover letter for me, I’m a software engineer, it’s not going to really add any value, it’s going to be kind of like this blank, like template thing if you don’t steer it the right way. So I say just use it to elevate, not replace.

Reno Perry 23:47
Yeah, 100% treat it like an assist that at the end of the day, you set it you’re making the decision, you need to make the final call, it’s not completely replacing the work you need to do, it’s assisting you in a new way that wasn’t possible before. In terms of doing a lot of these menial administrative tasks, I think is where we’re at today.

Chris Villanueva 24:05
I don’t want to cut the AI topic short or anything, but any last comments or thoughts there before ask about career growth, kind of rounding it out?

Reno Perry 24:12
No less topics, I think, you know, there’s a ton of tools out there that get shared all the time. You know, I’m happy to recommend some in the notes or section of the podcast if possible, but I would just say try different tools out there, get a feel for it. It’s not only great for the job search process, but it’s just going to be a regular practice in your actual job is learning how to harness and leverage AI so I think the sooner you can get your hands on different tools, the better.

Chris Villanueva 24:37
What was the one where it applies for you. That’s crazy. I’ve never heard of that. I should look this up.

Reno Perry 24:41
So there’s actually a bunch. Now the thing about AI is it’s easy to replicate a product so there isn’t one unique Resume Builder tool or now a unique apply on your behalf kind of tool so it’s you’re gonna see and we’re gonna see it’s already been only been a few months, but I think you’re gonna see a bunch of two Will is for each category. And there’s gonna be small differences here and there. But largely, they’re all using the same large language model or yak and tool that’s powering what happens. So that would just be my comment. There’s there’s just there’s there’s gonna be a ton out there, you can try and take a look at.

Chris Villanueva 25:16
Awesome. Well, Reno, you’ve been a fabulous guest, I want to hear a little bit more about wise Phil in a second. But perhaps let this be the segue. Your mission is to democratize access to the best companies and jobs. So can you elaborate on how you’re working towards this so democratizing this access? And what advice do you have for job seekers who feel like they’re at a disadvantage?

Reno Perry 25:40
Yeah, so a little bit of my company wise fool. So what we do is we like to call ourselves a community recruiting platform. So what’s really unique about what we do is we help companies tap into communities across multiple platforms. So we look for talent in places like Twitter, or now X could be LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, we’re going into Slack groups, Discord servers, so we’re really looking at all these social platforms where people are spending their time and looking at that as a talent pool. So typically, companies are just looking at Indeed, or, you know, job boards or LinkedIn, we’re going out beyond that to really find talent and connect them to opportunities.

So that’s the unique advantage for companies for job seekers channels to, yes, Slack channels, there’s thousands of Slack groups out there with these communities of hundreds or thousands of people that are maybe learning engaging, and trying to stay up to date on new information, it’s a really great place to actually connect people that job and source talent. So that’s one area we’re tapping into. And then for job seekers, you can also sign up on our platform, it’s sort of like a reverse supply situation, I like to call it so you sign up, create a profile, the employers that use my company wide school, so they’ll go in there and reach out to you directly. So that way, you’re not having to scan job boards and apply to jobs, we’ve really been pushing this reverse apply scenario where companies will just directly go to you. And that’s similar to how our layoff, worthless works to so companies will reach out to candidates directly that are on there. So those are just some of the the opportunities we have for job seekers to get their information, get the resume out there and connect with companies.

Chris Villanueva 27:16
Awesome. And so I will of course, link this within the description of the episode. But where can I find that website? How can I find this?

Reno Perry 27:24
Yeah, so if you go to see our regular site is just wiseful.co. And if you’re looking for the left list, it’s just the website, why school.co/the list and that is where both companies and candidates can go to sign up to connect with each other.

Chris Villanueva 27:42
Awesome. And for your listeners, Reno is definitely someone to follow on LinkedIn. We mentioned it kind of midway through this episode. So I’ll make sure to link that within the description of this episode. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, any last things you want to leave listeners with before we end things here.

Reno Perry 27:58
If you’re on the job search, don’t lose hope. It’s an incredibly frustrating process. It is a lot of work. 100%. And I think you’re right to feel frustrated with it. But I do want people to know that, you know, we’re seeing things that are trending in the positive direction. People on the left list are getting jobs, you know, we’ve actually seen numbers improve as we go through the year. So, you know, I just want to share that little bit of information that things are looking better. So you’re feeling down on your search or wherever you are, you know, it’s just a matter of time and pretty hopeful that things are gonna are gonna work out. And then yeah, just the last thing I hope anyone wants to connect or follow me. I’m most active on LinkedIn, and I try to post job tips, actionable tips almost every day. So hopefully that helps somebody out there.

Chris Villanueva 28:44
Awesome. Reeno, thank you so much. And I know you’re doing great work out there for job seekers. So thanks for coming on the show and appreciate you man. Yeah, likewise.

Reno Perry 28:52
Thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris Villanueva 28:54
Perfect. Now listeners this wraps up episode 313 of the Career Warrior Podcast one call to action I have for you. This is my favorite thing, as I’ve mentioned before, but post this episode on your own LinkedIn profile if you found it to be impactful and tag me tag Reno, I would love to see that this episode was impactful for you. And if you have any questions, I’m more than likely will respond as soon as I can. So please, please, please feel free to rewind and I always believe that repetition is a good way to learn. So things like that. We’ll make sure to link within the description of this episode, LinkedIn profiles and wiseful.co as mentioned, but really enjoy this one. And listeners I can’t thank you enough for being a part of this journey and listening in to the Career Warrior Podcast. Take care and I will see you next time in the Career Warrior Podcast.

And before you go, remember if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention. You’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast. Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.