Laura Leach, founder and president of Meredith Consulting, is a career coach based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She worked for much of her career as a technology recruiter and as a coach continues to focus on tech talent. We checked in with Laura for a conversation on Zoom to get a read on what’s happening in the trenches during these Covid times.
SD: Where are you seeing tech hiring right now?
LL: There’s definitely a real need in cloud services because so much innovation has happened there. What I’ve seen the most from a hiring perspective is within companies that develop collaboration tools, like Slack, Google Drive, Asana, Basecamp, GitLab. Or video collaboration like Zoom, or GoToMeeting, or Hangouts/Meet. In addition, a lot of online educational tools, like Chegg, are trying to figure out how to expand for the volume. AI companies are still active. And lastly, many companies in data analytics, consumer behavior predictive analytics, or machine learning are hiring.
SD: For job seekers who aren’t 100% in those squares, is there value in getting some training in any of those areas right now, since the market is somewhat paused?
LL: Absolutely. I think this is a really great time to sharpen up your skills and brush up on things that you might not know about and want to get a little bit deeper in.
SD: How are you guiding clients now, versus three months ago?
LL: I find I spend more time talking about standing out in the sea of candidates who are flooding the market right now. I’m definitely putting more emphasis on standing out and really utilizing your network so you can stay away from applying online.
SD: If you’re someone who isn’t comfortable with a cold outreach, what’s a graceful way of doing that within your network?
LL: One is to say, “You came up today on the right-hand side of my LinkedIn, and you look fantastic. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to you, and I hope everything’s going well.” That’s it. Just a quick hi. The second one is something a client has been doing and has had a lot of success with–giving unsolicited recommendations to people he hasn’t talked to in a long time. He said it’s organically started activating his network, and he’s getting some recommendations in return.
SD: Any advice for the older candidate?
LL: Most of my clients are mid- or late-career, so we talk about ageism a lot. We talk about taking away biases if possible, like removing graduation dates or removing old technology and replacing it with some newer technologies. We talk a lot about focusing on our value and not our lack of youth, and an area that we can exemplify our value is in our LinkedIn profile or in our “About” section within it. It can really help to tell a story to a recruiter and connect the dots for them.
SD: Stories are the way to go, right?
LL: Absolutely. I like to get my clients to answer interview questions in a story format. For example, with the “Tell me about yourself” question, which is usually the icebreaker question in the interview, they can answer with something like, “The moment I realized I was good at being a [whatever] was…..”
SD: Parting words?
LL: Let’s be honest, this isn’t a great time. But I try to make lemonade. We may have the bandwidth right now to work on certain areas that we have put off. That could be taking up new skills or dusting off old ones, learning new technologies or even just taking a master course in something like project management. This is a great time of reflection. I try to make lemonade from lemons as much as I can.