Takeover Unfiltered

Welcome to Talent Takeover Unfiltered. When it comes to working hard and keeping it real, we know our shit. Self care, happiness, inner peace, and time. I'm Brianna Rooney, and this is Taylor Bradley. Hey, y'all.

And we have thrived in chaos and turned it into an art form. So, Taylor, what are we doing here today? We're here to give

you a raw under the hood view of all things recruiting and finally give credit where credit is due to a long underrated industry that's full of quote, unquote experts. Alright.

Well, then let's take this show to the road.

Hello. Hello. Coming to 2 hot as always. Talent Takeover Unfiltered with Taylor Bradley. How are

you doing? Good. How are

you doing? I'm awesome. Awesome. We actually, just for the listeners know, we do record a couple episodes, in one day. So it's a Fri yay for us even though you're listening on a Tuesday.

Yeah. But, yeah.

So what are we chatting about today? I'm, like, excited for this.

We were chatting about bots, AI bots. We can't get away from it. It's only getting stronger. It's coming into recruiting in, like, a really massive way. And, I know you have experience with this, but Mhmm.

We have to learn how to pass the bot. Our resume has to pass the bot. We have to have video calls. We have to pass this bot. We have little chat bots coming up.

I mean, what else? What other bots do we have? The bots are everywhere. I mean, like, everywhere. I think about that all the time with, like, going to the grocery store and what things are automated these days, not just the checkout lines, but being able to scan things from your phone.

Like, the way

in which things are going with technology is just incredible to me, but specifically bots, specifically, obviously, in recruiting. You know, one I we've talked about this before, but one of the things that I just will like, it will never get old to me is I see so many resumes all the time in the ATS that are like I saw one actually yesterday. It was completely you know, a resume is normal, like, writing left to right. It was completely flipped to where at first I was, like, dude, is this in a different language? Like, at first glance, I thought it was, like, not in not written in English, you know, and it was, like Yeah.

Because it had all this crazy formatting and, like, a picture at the top, it did something in the ATS and it, like, flipped it. You know? And very few very few recruiters or companies just, like, as a rule of thumb for everybody, if your resume goes into the ATS or uploads into the ATS with crazy formatting, they're not going to reach out to you to tell you, hey. Can you upload another resume? Because this like, when you're getting thousands of applicants for things, you're not gonna do that.

And so I know that people tried to put together this super fancy resume with, like, color, like, a color panel on the side and, you know, picture and all that stuff. And I'm here to tell you firsthand, it looks crazy in the ATS. Like, we can't we can't tell what's what. Things are overlapping other things. And so although it may look really good to you, like, basic and simple is best when applying to a system directly through an applicant or applying to a position directly through an applicant tracking system.

So, I mean, I'm sure you've seen that too with resumes, like, crazy out. Like

so do you do you recommend, this might be, who knows, PDF or Word for for the bots to read properly?

I would personally do Word, but, like, ours doesn't have any issues with, PDFs or anything like that. It's truly just like those crazy formatting, but I would recommend Word because of it's sometimes you'll have hiring managers that wanna see things in a specific way. For example, like, they wanna see it in a Google Doc so they can add comments on the resume for the recruiter. And so you can't do that with a PDF, and it's very hard unless you have a PDF converting, you know, obviously software. It's hard to convert a PDF into a Google Doc, like, the copy and paste features, and it's much easier to do Word.

So I think, like, taking it back to old school, like, whatever, 2008, Times New Roman. No. It doesn't really have to be Times New Roman, but just being really simple and doing it on Word. And I promise you, like, the recruiter or whoever will appreciate the simplicity of it. You don't need to do all of that other stuff because that stuff I feel like, you know, we we're trying.

People are trying to make their resume stand out and look the best that it possibly can and put the colors and all of that stuff, and I totally understand all of that. But I think whenever you're applying through an applicant tracking system, none of that is gonna matter. It's not gonna show up that way, and it's gonna just actually be more work for the recruiter and maybe even a situation to where you get overlooked because if it's a mess, they'll just go on to the next applicant. Exactly. And I think that, I

I think of Legally Blonde, you know, when she, like, puts the perfume on the paper and stuff. Okay. We're not doing that anymore. You know, but, like, yeah, they wanna be, like, to stand out. Oh, we're looking at the same resume every day.

But what I think, you know, you guys aren't understanding is lots of times the bot's looking at your at your resume, and they're dwindling it down to the top applicants so we can so then we can look at it. So you might not even get past that. And, actually, what kinda irritates me about LinkedIn, for example, is that when you download your resume, like, oh, great. You can download your resume really easily. Like, the PDFs look like shit that come from Yeah.

LinkedIn. And in my opinion, I actually look at

it as, like, kinda lazy. Yeah. I mean, I can honestly say that I haven't had anybody apply with their LinkedIn resume. In sourcing though, we have definitely, like, in sourcing, I'll download a resume. I'll copy, like, the LinkedIn link and then I'll download a resume if that's how a hiring manager prefers to see it.

But, yeah. Excuse me. But it's not one that I typically get from a candidate that way. I I agree. That would be really lazy if that's all you did because most people don't put the amount of information that you need on a resume on their LinkedIn.

Because, like, who's gonna read all? Although they should. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would be, like, pay think about, like, some of these resumes are 3 pages long.

I know 2 was supposed to be the rule of thumb, but honestly, like, sure, some of these are realistically I I think they're trending more towards about 3 pages is what I'm seeing these days. And if somebody put all of that on their LinkedIn, like, it'd be a lot. I've seen ones with a lot. I know you have too with a lot of bullets and a lot of stuff, and it's like, okay. That's information overload.

Like, that's not what I wanna see from LinkedIn. I want you to be brief. I want you to give me context, so don't just put your job title and nothing else. Give me context, but, like, not too much. But I do think one of the things that's we should definitely discuss about is the video bots.

Like, that's that was new for me. I know I've touched on it before, but that was that was completely new for me. It's such a unique and weird experience and is one that I didn't love and it felt very impersonal naturally. But in learning more about it, I realized that there's things that people can do to not help not trick it, but kind of, you know, to help to help sway it in your favor. Sway it in your favor.

Yeah. So, like, when you're doing these video screens, it gives you not all of them. I shouldn't say this because I haven't seen all of them, but it will give you kind of like a score for the person based on how they answer the questions. And, a large component that makes up that score is touching on keywords that are in the job description. So it's like whatever you're configuring the bot to be for that specific role, like, what are some things I wanna hear, personality, characteristics, things they touch on and how they answer questions that are, you know, more personality or characteristic based versus, like, the technical skills.

And so it's always make sure that whenever you're gonna do one of those that you've read the job description and you incorporate some of those keywords that are in the job description and your answers. So you not only need to do that with your resumes now, you need to do that with your answers to bots whenever you're doing those video interviews because that is one of the biggest ways that you will pass it. It also which this is I'm not really sure about, like, how accurate I think this part is, but it will it will kind of gauge from a I don't wanna know how to really say it, but, like, a personality standpoint. Like, did the person seem really nervous? Did they seem at ease answering the questions?

Were they able to keep it within the timeline required is another really big one because you're given sometimes 1 minute, sometimes 2 minutes. That's the most I've ever seen to answer a question, which when you think about an interview question, because that's what they are. They're interview questions. It's really hard to get it down to 2 minutes, but it's like, okay, if one of the things they're assessing you on is your ability to be concise and brief in your responses, but still give a good amount of context and you go over, you know what I mean, over the minute to where it cuts off your answer, like, that's something it's taking note of. You know?

Right. And the other thing you can't redo them. Yes. Perfect. Perfect.

And you can't redo them. You cannot redo your answers to the questions in the systems that I've been in. Again, I haven't seen them all, but it does give you time to, like, here's the question. It gives you a countdown to, like, prep yourself to answer the question before the clock starts, But it's and it's that's more than you would get in an in person interview, to be fair. You know?

You're not gonna get a minute to prep yourself on how you would answer that question. But I definitely think that there's kind of a a little bit more anxiety that comes with, like, seeing a clock counting down the time to how much time you have to answer the question versus if you were in person answering it. But those are 2 of the biggest things I would say to trick the bot or pass the bot is, like, incorporate those keywords, make sure if there's a timeline allotted that you're actually adhering to that timeline to answer the question. Because if you go over, then it's gonna score you lower. Yeah.

Which is practice, practice, practice. So Yeah. For me, if if I was gonna pass the bot, what

I would do is I would take that job description. I would put it in chat gpt. Let's do bot versus bot, and I would say, take out the most important things in this job description that I have to talk about in my interview. And, additionally, please give me the tone of this job description so I can understand what type of personality I should portray. Like, I would ask about all of that shit.

And, also, you're kinda learning a lot about the company in in general. And it's not perfect. Right? Like, use your own brain. But then have those because here's here's the the beauty of having a bot to talk to instead of a human is you can literally have Post its all over your screen.

You know, all these cheat sheets and stuff like that. If you really wanna do it and just have those keywords that you're talking about, I mean, it's just a Boolean just like like your resume is. Right? So I I love that you brought that up. So you keep doing that.

And then, additionally, I mean, there's also bots on the other side that are training you how to pass these interviews. So whether or not you're training with a person or you wanna train with a bot as well, you have to make sure that you are concise because here's what sucks about the bot. The bot will not ask you a clarifying question. Whereas a human will ask you, god, you know, like, first of all, the person maybe got off track or, hey, maybe they didn't answer it in the way that I was really hoping for or that the higher manager needs, but the bot's not gonna not gonna ask you for a second chance. Like, you get one chance.

That's it. So that's what you have to really acknowledge with the bot, not to put more anxiety and fear in anyone. It's just, like, do your homework. Do your homework and practice. Time yourself.

Have the camera in front of you. Like, we have too much technology not to.

Yeah. And, I mean, I think that that right there is probably, like, we could save that for broke to boss tip, but that's that's so huge. Like, we used to have to prep back in the day. Like, you've always had to prep for interviews. In theory, you should have always had to prep for interviews.

But the day the the state age that we live in, the way in which you have to prep for interviews, I feel like is cut because of these different techno like, it's so above and beyond because they it's not even just, like, look at the company website anymore. It's, like, understand, you know, their social footprint, their social media, you know, the landscape there. Like, what's their presence on social media? Like, there's a lot of different things that you have to refer to when researching a company now that you didn't used to have to do. And like that, like, if you get one shot at it and you're thousands of applicants and you get one shot to do the video interview, you want it to be good.

And so, again, it's like prepping exactly like what you said, prep. You need to prep. You have to practice being concise. You have to practice being on video like this because a lot of interviews are not really done in person. Even for roles, you know, when I was interviewing what, recently, you know, which was, like, what, 3 months ago or so when I was in that process, I was like, oh, shit.

I haven't done this in a while. Like, I'm kind of out of practice. But even for roles that were local where, you know, there was, an on-site component to it, so you could you could go into an office in theory or there was a, you know, like, come into the office couple days a week. They still were doing the interview process completely remote, like, via video. So I think that's really, really interesting is that they're wanting, you know, going back to episodes that we've, you know, touched on earlier where we're seeing that be more of a theme that roles are not remote.

They're they're starting to back go back on-site. Still, they want people want to do things the quickest way possible and the most efficient way possible. So oftentimes, they will still do a video interview throughout the whole process, and then maybe your first day is when you show up and meet everybody in person. So it's really, really a good best practice to, like, you know, look in a camera, make I I love what you said about all the post its, but it's also really important to know that, like, eye contact in the camera when giving your answer is really, really and that you will be screen judged whatever based by the bot based on, like, if you're they can tell if you're reading something. And so Right.

Right. You'd be scored accordingly. So that's that's worth noting too. Yeah. No.

That that's that's really good. And then what about chatbots? Because I think chatbots also are

trying to take over that initial screen. So that's again, no you better know what you want out of that company and what you want out of your own career before you even embark in that. Yeah. Because although the the LLMs are getting better, it's it's it they'll be able to have more and more conversations with you, you know, but still, it's still limited. And so, you know, I I even think about maybe it's probably just a different episode,

but I even think about, like, salary negotiations.

You know? How are we gonna start essentially negotiating with the bot? Like, yes, again, let's leave that for a different time. But yeah. I mean, all of that stuff is coming, and we have to be prepared for it.

And I would say, like so going into our broke to boss tip because I know we're about it time, but I would say, like, the biggest thing takeaway I had is like, there's a stress of of prepping for an interview in person, but, like, you have to do that and then someone prepping for an interview with a bot because you're not gonna get that under human empathy or understanding, like, a bot is literally just programmed to do one thing, and they're not gonna read through and answer and dig deep, like you mentioned, dig deeper. So, like, the amount of prep that you need to do to interview with a bot is just as much prep that you need to do to interview with a person. And maybe then some, because you if you've never interviewed via video, if you've never like, you really have to prep in this day and age going into an interview. And y'all, I know it's exhausting. I know it's like a job in itself.

I mean, it's daunting. It's ex it's awful, but prep is so important and prep is what's gonna it's gonna get you to the next step. Like, passing that bot is really, really important. It's it's the first step that a lot of companies are using these these days because there's such an abundance of applicants. And so it's it's important to know how you can approach that and and, you know, pass it.

And I think the keyword stuff is I would say, out of everything that we discussed today Mhmm. Don't take anything else away. It's definitely incorporate keywords from the job description into your answers. 100%. Love it.

Good luck. And, of course, naturally,

talk to us about this. What did we miss? How can we help other people? This is what, you know, the this podcast is for. And, on the other side, please review us.

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you guys. Thanks y'all. Bye.