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Ever wondered what it's like to weave through the labyrinth of tech careers while maintaining a relationship that's as robust as a well-coded program? Chenae and Terrence Erkerd, our dynamic tech couple, peel back layers of their professional and personal lives, offering a rare glimpse into the highs and lows of the industry. From the emotional turmoil of job rejections to the triumphs of skill-building and networking, their stories resonate with both the greenest of graduates and seasoned tech veterans.
Navigating the tech landscape requires more than just knowing your way around a computer—it's an art of strategy and resilience. Whether it's tackling job search rejections head-on or mastering the nuances of interview techniques, we unpack the toolkit you need for career success. The Erkerds don't just share advice; they bring to the table hilarious help desk anecdotes and the sobering realities of recruitment, providing a complete picture that's as enlightening as it is entertaining.
But it’s not all server racks and software—there's a human element to this tech tale. Join us as we explore how financial responsibility, career expectations, and the strength of relationships intertwine with our professional lives. Chenae and Terrence dive into conversations that challenge traditional expectations and highlight the importance of support and understanding, proving that the backbone of any thriving career is, in fact, a solid partnership. Tune in and be inspired by a story that proves tech and love can indeed coexist in harmony.
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00:00 - Tech Couple's Journey and Career Advice
11:11 - Love Story
23:45 - Navigating Career Challenges and Choices
27:04 - Navigating the Job Search Process
37:07 - Interview Coaching and Career Advice
46:13 - Recruitment and Job Seeker Frustration
49:39 - Navigating Job Search Rejection and Ghosting
01:01:25 - Navigating Tech Recruiting and Relationships
01:05:11 - Working From Home and Career Development
01:10:14 - Project-Based Resumes for Entry Level
01:21:58 - Funny Help Desk Stories
01:30:17 - Unrealistic Expectations in Relationships
01:36:54 - Navigating Expectations in Relationships
01:49:46 - Financial Responsibility and Relationship Dynamics
Welcome back to the technical talk podcast I'm your host HD, where we talk about tech, careers and much, much more. Today is episode 120 and we have amazing guests for you. Today. We have the Urquids. Now you may be familiar with one of the Urquids she is Shanae Urquid, aka the recruiter cousin, and she's already been on a platform. But today we have an even special guest. We have her husband, terrence Urquid, joining us.
Today We'll unravel the real life challenges faced by IT professionals and gain insight into how the tech literacy, or lack thereof, can cause sub security mishaps and the frustrations that bubble up when users resist troubleshooting advice. Terrence and Shanae will share their personal journey through tech, from engaging with Facebook reconnections to rethinking the value of productivity and remote work. We'll also be touching on some career advice, like why you should always stay interviewing, how to build your hands on skills and the nuances that came with Shanae when she worked at healthcare recruitment. Stay tuned as we explore the challenges of job searching, ghosting by employers, the unpredictably of job stability and the vital role of integrity in the hiring process, plus a peek into the Mixer's Cloud networking event, the pros and cons of recruiters and a sprinkle of supernatural chit chat about sleep, paralysis and horror movies. So sit back and relax and enjoy the show.
Perfect, perfect. All right, we got I'm going to make sure I'll miss your name up the last name, urquid. Okay, we got the Urquids here. Yes, sir, and I guess I want to start off first with asking y'all I guess did Mixer Cloud bring y'all down here?
Yes.
Okay.
So we, we also too. So I'm a little jealous because my husband had, like, this companion thing on his Delta account so we got to fly with the companion thing. I'm a little mad that I didn't have it on my account, but he had it on his, like y'all know it's yeah, he had to use it, uh, within a certain time. So I was like, oh, we can go to Dallas, we can go to Mixer Cloud, so we don't lose it, okay.
Um, as a married couple there, how was your experience there? Oh, funny thing, my friend Kenna, I say they got the meat job. Kenna was like man she. They got a whole entourage right I know she got security.
She did no it was cool. Um, I don't know, how was your experience.
I mean it was. It was different for me because I'm not used to being that type of crowd like that. So, um, it was fun. I actually enjoyed myself. I met some cool people there and I got some drink for free. I took her a ticket cause she didn't want to drink. Yeah, I don't know. I had a good time though. Yeah, watching her, you know also work, and meeting with other people too. That was, it's like it's always a pleasure to just um, just seeing her, her, her element, so yeah, but you like, you talked to people too.
I did.
I know a little drink's helped out. So and there were my people.
What's that? Drake was doing? What's this? On passion food, he got a couple of drinks dog going on with. Sound much better, yeah, yeah. But um, I'll tell you from my experience. I went to Mixer Cloud. I think it's cool. I don't think they have set it up in a way for a job searches to really be successful, because you don't know who's a recruiter, who's not. I've advocated, hey, get a separate section for some recruiters, or maybe you set up something internally where they can kind of pre-screen with some people already, so I'd have a established amount of people they may talk to. So there's a lot of people are there to try to get jobs. Yeah, then the other part of why, like I would have only came back to to see y'all, but I was working. But um, they seem like people would be there to try to find them, like a husband or a wife too.
I also heard that too, like a, like a speed, a speed dating, yeah. So it felt like a little bit, but it was. You know, yeah, it was different.
I mean they had the different tables, though, like they did have a careers table.
Oh, okay.
They did have like a recruiting job seekers like section Um and I. I did like I didn't plan to stand there and give advice, but it just kind of happened.
Yeah.
But I did kind of go over there and we we posted up there for a little while with Christie. Shout out to Christy Christie, jennifer, give me higher Christie. Um okay, I got y'all. She was like okay, I got you, um. But yeah, we posted up with um. It was me, her and one other recruiter and we just kind of talked to people and we networked ourselves and you know it was really cool, that's cool.
I'm glad it's a little bit better. I know when I went the hotel was nice, but it was hot.
It was hot. It was hot yeah.
The drinks wasn't free.
More people start coming in, yeah.
It was a, it was a buildup that people had to pay to leave from the parking and I already had to go, like back up north. So but I mean over and all, it was cool. I met some people that I think some. Has anybody came out to show you? Yeah, one person I met there in person. They came on the show because that's what I went for. I find talent or interest in people that could come on the show, so that's good, but the intro to pie real quick. Welcome back to the textual talk podcast. Well, I'm your host, hd, the authority on everything tech related career advice, you name it. We got it, this episode 120, and this is going to be the first installment of our tech couple series. And we got the urchins with us today and they came out to rock with us all the way from always getting messed up. North Carolina, yeah.
All the way from North Carolina. They came to rock with us out in Dallas and you know, I just hope you're on tune for a good show. But if you're on YouTube right now, you know what to do. Hit the subscribe button, like, hit off on notifications. If you're listening on Apple podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review, follow the podcast, listen along enough so I make a download and for all y'all that's watching the premiere right now, hit the like button and subscribe. But I'm glad that you agree to this.
And Shanae was like this is going to be the first time my husband actually do something with me, like how did you decide to do this? But it's something I've been wanting to do for a while. Just, I like to incorporate like real life that goes on when it, when it comes to our careers and nobody talk about work, life balance and how it is beneficial to have two people that make above average, above average income in a household to where you can do certain things. I remember it was like a while back I think y'all went on a nice vacation, right. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. If it's, if it's one person that ain't not making above average income, y'all vacation may be to Motel 6.
Yeah, but we're going to make it best of it. We that Motel 6 is going to be five stars to us. We're going to have fun regardless.
It could be. It could be. I'm hard for a good staycation as well.
Yeah, we do. We do girls to come into the city and stay at the hotel.
It's a hotel somewhere. Yeah, yeah we what was that?
We definitely did staycation for my for my girl's birthday in January and Frisco area that's north of here, they have a a high regency that's built into the Stonbrough hotel is really nice and pretty cool. You really don't have to leave the hotel. If you don't want to, oh OK, all right. But you guys know the recruiter cousin already. She's been on before and she's back, but now we want to. I'm not going to say today that, I want to say we're going to introduce her husband, black IT, mr Tarence Urquhart. And can you just introduce yourself for the listeners?
Man. So Tarence, tarence Urquhart I am. I've been in tech for like 15 years now, so I am an IT specialist level three technician. So I was born and raised Well, I was born in Connecticut but I was raised in North Carolina. I met this also on some later up beside me. She has been a beacon in my life. So I think a lot you know a lot of my success to her. She pushed me forward Look back to school, you know, moving to my career further. So, yeah, ok.
Yeah, they always say, behind every great man it's, a great woman it's a greater woman actually. Ok, OK, but they never say behind a woman is a great man, you know, they'll never say there is, though.
There has to be. There has to be both Like, honestly, because, recruiter, cousin Shanae, whatever you want to call me, I do a lot like a lot and I do a lot outside of work. I do a lot within compliance, I do a lot outside of work.
I do a lot after work, just after five o'clock and that goes into my personal time, and so he's normally downstairs cooking dinner or, if I'm running a little behind, he'll feed our dogs for me because it's normally my job and he doesn't complain about it and it really it's. It's genuinely awesome to have a spouse who understands your hustle and understand your branding and your building and your calling.
Yeah, I totally agree with that sentiment because, like we were talking about earlier, people think I got a team, but it's really a team with me. But while I'm doing this, or while I'm like when we record remote, you know the girls are in there with their mom. Or if I'm going to record on Sunday, like I was talking about the girls at the mom, or they go out the whole day so I can record and do my content and everything. So you're right, it does take support, because it's hard to do if you don't have any support. So I appreciate you for supporting Shanae and her efforts. Oh, you always, always. And I want to talk to you a little bit and then we'll get back on the subject of YouTube, because I haven't had anybody on there on YouTube, anybody on there in a while with and I would say, judging from when I visited your LinkedIn and looked at your profile, that you pretty much have made a career out of pretty much help, this, this type support.
Yes, yes.
And there's only a handful of people that do that, and because I'm seasoned or you can say I'm a tech veteran, you've 15, I'm going on 11. I always oftentimes tell people a lot of the stuff that they hear about, like we know it's like help this and then we know it's like help this, where you actually getting your hands out and learning stuff. Yeah, I said, people is different help this. I think one of them yes, it is Two knocks on help this is it don't pay, and I'm not really doing it.
Yeah, yeah.
But I know the people that do real help this stuff and I've seen some real help this pay when you're doing a job that's actually paying you for your skill set and your knowledge. Oh yeah, I wanted you to talk a little bit about that because you know, so far my platform everybody's either doing like software, cybersecurity, cloud, project management, you name it but help this isn't getting a lot of love and there may be some people that just want to do help this but maybe discouraged by because of how people kind of often knock on a title, and I kind of want you to talk about that a little bit, yeah.
So there's pretty much there's. There's two different ones. So there's a service desk and there's a help desk. So help desk, those are people that's coming to tech, that don't really have a technical background. So if you don't have no certifications, you know, like that, that's what you people will go into that area. Now, service desk provides a service, like if you people that have skillsets like far as AD, anything like cloud related, they go people, people, people, people, people, people in those areas right there with folks on that right there. So, yeah, yeah.
I know, for me my first role was help. This was called service desk but we did kind of both things, but mostly software related, or you know, hey, my mailbox not syncing. Yeah, oh, I can't see my shared drive. Can you find like where my share drive? And so it's kind of like stuff like that. Like then it was government based so they had so many different resolution teams. Oh, this is going to the printer team, it's going to the exchange scene.
It's going to the messaging team. So I definitely feel you on that. But and I'm trying to remember back from Shanae and I's episode about you two Like we didn't briefly talk about y'all, but so did y'all meet, like were you in school when you met him or was it after school? It was in between. Okay.
So my so. So when I was academically dismissed from law school after my first year, I had to take a year off and I had to get a job. So I worked two different jobs. So I worked at a company called Datros and our client was Kodak, so the Kodak kiosk that you have in like Walgreens and CVS, and it was Sam's club. And it was target, was it? Yes, it was target.
It was. It was CVS targeting.
Sam's and so we had the. We were the people who, if the kiosk stopped working, you would call us and we would talk you through how to fix the kiosk. And then I also worked at Talbot's, which is the clothing store. So Terrence and I met at the call center, so he already worked there and I had got a job and he saw me, he was mesmerized and stuff.
I showed up on X-T because I thought about that first episode of Martin when they were trying to say, like how they rolled up on each other. So how you remember how y'all met, Like is it what she say? You rolled up on it like what, what, what, what kind of game you hit her with. So when I saw so, I was at my desk and she pulled up with her friend.
So I was. You know what's my my business, says. She walked up and I saw I was checking around a little bit and her friend was communicating with. Some of my friends were behind me, so she wasn't paying me no mind. She was on her phone the whole time. I was watching her, you know. I was checking her out. Then, as no time went by, I was here around around the job and I would you know, I'll walk by her cubicle see if she was there that day or if I was lucky enough, she'd be taking her lunch around the same time. So I'll be outside walking. I might see her from a distance walking too.
So strategic engagement is what I call it.
It was, you know, it was coincidence, and she was just right there.
I'm a basketball player too, so I used to have a ball in the truck of my car and in my breaks I would go outside and I would dribble. And it would be. People thought I was weird because I would just go outside and dribble a basketball. But when you from up north, that's how you, that's how you grow up. You grow up and you, if you don't have nothing to do, you just get the ball out the car and you just start dribbling. So I would dribble and people would be like looking out the window. And some people tell me we saw you dribble in the basketball.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm just chilling.
Yeah, yeah, did you. Did you ever do like any love and basketball type stuff? Yeah, I played each other before.
Well, like she was. So I was trying to find my way to like talk to her more. So I found she was selling the book. So I was like, oh, it's my opportunity now. So I, you know, we sat down, we talked a little bit and told me about her book and everything. So I bought a book. Then the next day I told my friends I'm going to ask her out. Then he said, um, bad news man. She um think he was dating somebody. Right, yeah, she was dating somebody. I was like, oh man, I was my opportunity. I was like, come on, but yeah, this, yeah went from there. I was like I was happy for her but I really wanted to, you know, take her out somewhere nice.
Alex found upon that story. I was dating and then I was engaged. And then I was in, and then I got back into law school and so from there I left, and I don't think I told you I was leaving, I think I just left.
He's left, yeah, and.
I, so I left, but him and I reconnected on Facebook, like two years later and so, um when we could reconnect it on Facebook, I was, I was engaged at the time. It was in gas and then um, I was unengaged, so it went from oh, happy pictures, oh my gosh, to nothing.
And so the what caught my attention was he had, he was concerned, so it wasn't, but I didn't realize that she was, um, wasn't engaged anymore, and so a friend of mine told me that, hey, you know she's single. I said what's going on, like why she's single? You know she should be married by now. So, um, I pretty much reached out to on Facebook to see how she was doing, cause I was in no worry about her. And, um, yeah, we checked out online for a little bit and, um, it's telling the full story what happened, and I told you not to be there for her. I want to try, not like you know, you know, trying to rush up on her like that, but I was, you know, trying to let her know that I'm here for you, pretty much.
Here's the spiritual part of that. So that was in 2016. And so I got unengaged in 2015 and 2016,. Uh, literally New Year's Day of 2016. The Lord said to me and not one of my spiritual guesses is hearing the audible voice of God so the Lord said to me Shanae, there's going to be at least one man every single week that is going to want to talk to you, take you out and all these things and court you. And so he said, but I will tell you when to pay attention. And so I said okay. And so, literally, I walked out of the church and at least one person. Soon as God said, I walked out of the church and somebody started hitting on me and flirting with me. And every week after that, from almost every single week from January 1 of 2016 to October of 2016, someone tried to approach me in some way, and so when Terrence reached out to me, literally immediately, God said pay attention. I was like, okay, here we are.
Yeah, you know some guys are scared to talk to a female. They don't want to be putting that friend zone. I wasn't worried about that. I was like, no, no, no, I'm here for her. I knew that she was going through something and, um, that she needs somebody to really truly be there for her. And um, I told her, hey, you know I'm here for you If you want to hang out a little bit. You know I was playing a little seeds here and there Got to. Hey fellas, that just mean.
Hey, listen, hey, what's for you Gonna be for you?
Yeah, yeah.
No matter what. I always hit the girls like they joke on Twitter and stuff like that, but like hey, sis, you know your man's somewhere married to somebody else. Like they say stuff like that all the time, but sometimes what they be engaged somebody.
Yeah, she was yeah.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
That's a. That's a good love story. So then, like after that, that's kind of like everything like just took off.
Yeah, pretty much. So we. So he reached out to me send me a DM in October of it was like October 4th of 2016. And literally we've been. We have been talking every day since. And so he he actually thought I used to. I was still in North Carolina and at the time, because I was unengaged, I had to go home and get my life together. So I was in Jersey and I was literally sitting in my aunt's den and when he thought I was still in North Carolina, so I was. We were talking about movies because we realized we both love movies.
I'm like that fantasy type thing, and so I was like, oh, I'm going to go see. It was the Nat Turner movie and I was like, oh, I'm going to go see Nat Turner. He was like I'll go with you. And so I was like well, I'm going with my aunt, I'm in Jersey, and so that's when I told him I had moved back to Jersey, and so our, the foundation and our relationship was 100% communication. We had to talk.
Yeah, I think that's good, though I think that I've seen like a lot of different people, relationships and everything else. I think communication is at least top two and not two, and then after after communication, it's probably money.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I probably, I probably would say that. So you brought up movies. I love movies, I like shows. I was actually about a movie last night. I was a little tired so I fell asleep back on the second episode, but we were watching a show gun effects.
Yeah, and watched it. Yeah, pretty good.
Cinematography, pacing, everything is great. So I like to watch stuff like that. So that kind of like it'll go up and down for me, Cause like I'm probably going to go from watching a show gun to probably watching BMF sometime tonight. We'll keep up with like whatever they came up with, but like little meat in them. But like for y'all like I know you said y'all like the fantasy stuff, Like what should I do Y'all have like a favorite movie that the child watched over and over together?
No, because Terrence is his, his mind is weird. So like there'll be a time where he'll he'll go oh baby, we need to go see this movie, and I'll call it. I'll say I'll go okay, and it's a hit, Like I loved it. Then there are times, just very weird movies, that he'll take me to and I'll go okay, never again. So it was one time about this space, this. They were in space and then they crashed their ship and then they got. They escaped.
That's all I know about the movie and I was just like oh my gosh, I just wasted my whole life just like in this one movie. So if anything our movies are, I'm definitely for me a rom-com, I'm definitely a rom-com woman, and for him it's very action, action or thriller space he absolutely adores space and like anything telescope related. He absolutely loves gravity yeah.
And my favorite all time space movies.
But I also love inspirational movies, so I am a big what. My favorite type of movie to watch are based on two stories, because I need to see the like, the. I am a person who needs to see the triumph, but I need to see the process because it helps me in my life when I'm going through something.
Yeah, definitely. I feel that. I think that's probably why I like anime. I love anime. Oh yeah, look at how she's like, oh Lord, they're gonna start talking about this. I mean it's cool, I mean everybody's, everybody's getting into it. Like you know, my lady, like I think she said she started watching Naruto at the years and but a little bit she was watching the Tec on Titan, like last year I was telling her I mean to me it's still kind of overrated.
Yeah, I watched like maybe a couple of episodes of it when it first came out and started off too slow and it's stupid.
But if you keep watching there's a payoff. I haven't finished it yet, but for me I like everything, like you said, thriller and horror. But see, she don't like none of that, so she's scared of it. Like I want to watch. I want to rewatch Insidious. Like I love Insidious. Yes, yes, in the Conjure movie. I haven't seen the Conjure See, anything with that. I ain't gonna watch it at my house. I'll watch it at your house. I ain't watching none of it with that. But I'll watch Insidious though, because I mean, I had some thoughts about Astral projection, where there may be real or not.
Who knows.
I think it is.
I think Astral projection is real.
I don't know, I don't know. Listen, it took me years to watch the Conjuring and part of that is again I'm spiritual, so a lot of that stuff sits with me and not the best way possible. Well for him. He can watch it, not stick, I'm gonna sleep.
It's because I know well, some, a lot of stuff like, for example I'm not scared of like it or nothing.
It's the same thing, right.
Freddie Kueger and that yeah.
Freddie Kueger, jason Checkie Like I can. When I was a kid definitely hands down yeah. But the spiritually demon base, oh yeah.
I don't really come from him like Insidious is kind of like that, but it's not like. It's more of like an interesting story about yeah why the little boy won't wake up and yeah, and he think he's in a coma but he just can't get back to his body. And then around that time is brown, I want to say around the time the first Insidious came out. It's about the time I started realizing kind of what sleep paralysis was. Yeah, and.
I started figuring out how I was getting the sleep paralysis, and so once I figured that out, I don't really get that much anymore, because it scared me at first, like when you first aware you only have to be once, and it scared the mess out of me.
It was happening for me like a string of days, and I found out I was sleeping a certain way and my body was a fully resting, but everything was trying to move, so I couldn't get up and I was getting scared. I started going to sleep with Israel, a new breed. I don't think it's going to help me. And after that, though, once I figured it out, I was like okay, it's good. It's happened a couple of times, like when I used to work in the knock. I used to work, have to work on the weekend shift, so I had sleep paralysis a couple of times there, because I'm not supposed to be asleep. So I was telling my mind, my body, my mind say don't fully go to sleep, because if you got to wake up, you got to wake up. And that's how it happened too, but other than that I hadn't experienced it that much. But you two married Well. At first you were the only person that was in tech, right? Yes, yes, okay. And I think you got into tech roughly four, five, six years ago.
Mm-mm, it was two years ago.
Well.
I mean, let me rephrase it.
You're going to have to rephrase it. Let me rephrase it. Or recruiting I just want to talk about recruiting.
Yeah, so I've been. So April will be five years. Okay, there we go.
I want to say your career, because I was like technically you could be in the industry, but like technically with your career is man, you've been doing like for five years. So I think this is a cool thing too right. Once you have people who are like like intake or have technical positions, you start outside of those prestigious. You know, I'm a doctor, certain types of specialist doctor, I'm a lawyer or I'm an entertainer or whatever. Then you just regular people, but you realize, hey, they make substantially more than I have and they may not even finish school or something. And so your mind starts to be open of like. Were you? That catalyst is like baby, like, stop worrying about all that here, do all this and get you a job that's gonna pay you what you work for. Was you the person?
telling her that, yeah, I was pretty much telling her, no, don't focus on, you know, the time she had a contract job. So it was times where she wouldn't work for a week depends on the contract and everything right. And when the certain like say how these come up, she went by gifts. I don't worry about that, don't worry about me, I'm good, we are good. So we just focus on what we can do. So you know, I was just, you know, getting her that that confront on that, it doesn't affect me, it doesn't affect us, we're good. So, yeah, so, yeah, I was, you know, trying to make sure that she was good, make sure she was comfortable with everything going on. And you know it was. It was a little challenging at first but you know, she got through it and she put her head back up and realized, you know, okay, let me try doing Uber, let me do Lyft instead, and she found a way around it.
Postmates, postmates, yeah, which turned into Uber Eats.
Yeah.
I just I understand what job seekers feel. I know what that's like. I know what it's like to not pay you with your, with your, your worth. I know what it feels like to have a degree in two degrees and you're doing total opposite. Like imagine having a law degree and being a Lyft driver. Yeah, Like there were many days where I was just like why did I go to law school? Yeah, Like it was hard.
Yeah, and then that time she was thinking to herself, she was like I myself I didn't have a degree and I was in tech, you know, making making these my money than people that had a degree Like she did. So it was, you know, puzzling for trying to piece that together and I said I definitely get it. You would think when she got out of college you'll be somewhere further in life, to people that don't have a degree, or have a law degree especially.
So yeah, yeah, we definitely can talk about that. I've talked about it on many episodes and solo episodes of how what happens sometimes when you go to school or people know where you from If you don't automatically hit it right there, there are other people who were always the naysayers saying mm-hmm, you thought you was better than us going to school.
Now you just like us. And what is the term called? I think it's called post-grad depression. You finished school and now ain't nothing landed. You found out and I say this because I recently had a young man reach out to me on LinkedIn he just graduated, I think, of either a bachelor's or something in cybersecurity. Tell me, hey, I can't get an interview, I can't get a job. In my mind I'm like college is not preparing them for the job search process, and that gave me also ideas like how can I make myself partner with colleges or whatever to help people specifically like computer information system, computer science, cause I've already been through it and I know what that curriculum is not teaching you and I know how to help you get to the next level. At least just get interviews. But I thought about this like you'll go like a long, long time but just not find nothing, because you're not even realizing that you did learn a lot of stuff but you don't even realize how to highlight the skills that you did give them to. I think that's a big one.
Yeah, I made an offer to a guy who so new grad, of course, just graduated last May, and I was in a kind of a team who needed to hire multiple engineers, and so he got the interview he did well, and I called him and he was like so I told him, I said you know, we want to make you an offer and he was like really? I was like yeah, and so he was like he said Shanae, I graduated in May, I have applied so much, and he said this just came out of nowhere. He was like the interviews came out of nowhere, this offer is coming out of nowhere. And he was fine with like relocating, like it wasn't, but the relief in his voice and on his face was just like thank God, and I know that feeling.
I know that feeling where, especially with new grads, where you did all this work and now your classmates have become your competitors because all of you are looking for a job at the same time. And so this one particular team that I worked with, I prayed God for this team because they gave me the opportunity to make offers to new grads and so to experience like that turnover, so to speak, of going from now I'm a college grad, I am now a job seeker, but now I have a lot. I mean, excuse me a job in a very prestigious company. To watch that and to hear the relief in their voices, I know what that's like.
Yeah, I know, when I graduated in 24th. No, actually I graduated November 2013. I was just applying to everything. Nothing was landing. I looked up, recruiter hit me up from Apex and I gotta tell everybody I always keep it honest that first help desk contract 17 an hour. But to me from Shreveport, louisiana, I'm good, I'm around people that's making 10, 12, $8 an hour, not realizing that what I was getting paid at the time was getting underpaid because we was doing the most work. Them teams, I was telling me we assigned the stuff to they don't do nothing to. We assigned it to them. We didn't want to take them to cars.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. So I was like, man, am I gonna land something? Like it's stupid me. I had to get a clearance for the role and at the time I worked at Target all throughout college. So I was back at Target and so they was like, yeah, you're supposed to start like April. So I quit before I actually got the official first day. But I actually think I needed that relief. Like I went from graduating in 2013 directly back to working like college. So it was like I was just on go and go. I needed that month in like a couple of weeks of like not doing nothing, but I just, of course, he really wasn't prepared for like money had got real tight right before then, but then I finally got that start and had to drive and it was on now. It was like all the things like when we talk about people getting into tech or anything else, then we start thinking about some stuff that like school and ready teacher.
Oh yeah, email etiquette you don't know how to respond and send emails the right way. A lot of people are typing in emails like they text. Yeah that's true. That's true.
You gotta learn, you gotta say per so-and-so, and I do it now, like even in my emails, whether it's personal or professional, and in my DMs, and I'll literally I'll catch myself. So if I reread it I'll go oh no, don't say it that way, say it this way, yeah.
I think it also starts with you know the house. You know, I think, as parents, if we teach our kids how to prepare for the real world, like that, like you know we have allowances, right how about we set up something where they can have like different jobs and you have them apply for that job. They say, hey, you want me to be a dishwasher, let's do an interview. So prepare your kids for the future, Cause when they get into like college they need to know okay, I don't do the basics of things. So while I get out there in the real world, I'm prepared. No more prepare than smile.
You should trade more he gonna have my kids to find to be dishwashers.
You know, funny enough though it's not the same thing, but they had this thing in Frisco for kids called Kid Zania, and like they get to go into place and they get to do different jobs. So like you be a fireman, you be a policeman, you could be a podcaster.
They got like different stuff they could do there. But no, funny enough that you say that. I was on TikTok and I guess Dr Umar was on little Yachty's podcast or something. But he was talking about parents and like the kids who are not doing good in school and all this and that. But the parents still say, oh, my kid is going to go to school. And he's saying, before you send them to school, act yourself. Did you prepare this person to go to school? Do they have the discipline to be successful in that? Did you prepare them for all that?
And when you really start thinking about your child, you're like I really did. I seen the same thing with my brothers. I was like, oh, this one needs to go to community college. This one will be fine. I'll tell my mom you know one of them to listen, because sometimes you just got to hit your own head and they come back and say you're right.
But I was like I've been through it. I don't want you to have to go through the struggles that I did, whether it didn't have what I need, the first quarter or second quarter, or really not knowing how to schedule my classes or not knowing how to network, all the different ways of time I wasted of not going to career fairs, or just I was talking to my friend all of us are from the same area. It was, like you know, I didn't really even know about like just applying like internships everywhere, cause I was so concerned about getting to a place because I didn't have a car. You know there's a lot of kids that's not applying to internships because they're somewhere else cause they don't have a car. When they realized a lot of times that company will pay for them to come to where they at, and now we got Uber and stuff, like they'll be away from the work it won't work and everything too.
So those are whole bunch of things. I don't know if they have those real conversations with those graduates or those college kids, but I think those are the conversations they need to have outside of the same stuff that they taught the people 10 years ago.
Yeah, yeah, I do wish that schools had a different criteria to when they hire their career services people, because yet the career services office in Moscow anyway, taught us about like different job boards that we can use, but the step by step and baby step strategy is missing.
Yeah, and everything was the same, like the resume that they taught me how to make in, I think, business communication class, whatever it was was not akin to something that would speak to what skills or work projects I worked on getting that undergraduate degree to make me look like a good candidate. That's another big part that that was missing of why, like if you didn't get an internship and, of course, you got related coursework but hey, what did you do in those related courses? Yeah, I know you worked at Target cool, that's good, you got some soft skills there but what do you know how to do? I didn't know how to showcase that. The help desk is how I showcase that I had some type of technical competency about myself.
Yeah, me being in the background while she's on working, listen to her candidates. They look great on paper, right, but when you go up front and the manager to have the interview, they have a hard time articulating what they actually do. You know their paperwork is short but they can't show the manager. Hey, this is why I do X, y and Z. So I've seen people feel like that. People for me. I'm thinking like oh, these people are very, very smart people. You would think they already had a leg up, but a lot of times they're not prepared mentally.
Yeah, I think that's one of the first things, like she's known, we won't say, but we talked about an interview that I did. I was self-aware on knowing that I knew which parts of that loop I did well in. I knew which parts that I did okay but could have did better, just because of rust and other stuff that's going on career-wise. But a lot of people are not self-aware and so sometimes a lot of them are just mad like yo, I ain't getting picked. I should have got picked. I'm like brother, if you record yourself listen back and see how you sound.
I say it all the time, like I tell people hey, please don't oversell yourself, Like if they interview your resume as is for some intro, but don't try to overdo it, because you're gonna add pressure on yourself, yeah keep it simple.
My client did that and I was so I was mad because I was like, bro, don't add extreme stuff on your resume without me looking at it. But two, why did you add this stuff, not thinking I had to? I straight up honest with him. I was like, bro, we black your interview. Not gonna really be easy yeah and so on, keep honest with you. The artist money they from the paid, these people that want to work this job. Your interview gonna be hard yeah yeah.
And I had to get that through his head. And the other night was doing like mock interview so I was talking with him and I was giving away so how he can stop saying um or some of his filler words. And I was saying, listen, sometimes I'll just pause and start back talking Like it's okay, like in your mind you think you're talking very slow, but you're really not. And I said when you reduce the amount of ums or likes or rights or whatever your filler word may be mine used to be you know, say, you know all the time. Never knew I was saying it Until I started listening back to podcast episodes and content I used to make about boxing. But I was like that takes away a little bit from them, feeling like you know what you're talking about and if you can minimize a lot of that you'll sound better. And I was. I bought up.
He used to play football and I was like he was. He was in there talking cause I was reading the questions that he said they was gonna ask him some topics and he was. He was like pushing, he was gunning too much for it and I was like yo, you doing too much. I said what position you play the football. He was like I was on the O line.
I was like so you know and practice, y'all practice. Hey, there's gonna be a hard count and we gonna go on too. Or if you doing too much it's gonna be an off size on you. I ain't gonna have to go back five yards. I was like relax and let the game come to you. And then I was telling about the way that he's projecting the talking. I was like if you was talking to a chick, you would be assertive in a certain way to get her to kind of feel you versus kind of what you're talking. I was like take that mind frame into this interview so they could understand like you're a confident individual. You're not arrogant, but you are confident. Be yourself.
Yeah.
And so, as I said, just keep on rehearsing these things. We were talking about send them to me in the morning, and by the morning he sounded much better. But that's what it really takes. Some might that gonna be honest with you and say that'll sound good. Yeah, that's what it takes.
If you're not being honest with them, you're causing them to fail.
But I think you have to ask the candidate who's listening, the client or whatever they are to you.
They have to be ready to receive the honesty and that is the hardest part about coaching people and giving people advice is we have to be as honest as we can so that you all can understand, like how to actually prepare and so like. So there are times when I'll go on LinkedIn and I'll see, I'll start seeing, I think I did so well on this interview and I've had candidates no matter where I worked in any industry. I think I did so well in this interview, oh my gosh. And then I'll see another post or I'll see a message and they'll say, oh, I didn't get the job.
And so when I was in healthcare, I was mock interviewing people just for whenever they were ready to do whatever job they were gonna do. We would get together and we will mock interview on like a Sunday and I would listen to how they answer questions and I'm like you think you're ready to just interview, like you sure Cause, then on top of that, it's on the flip side of that, shanae, you have to watch how you say it, because then they gonna get offended and nothing is gonna be productive. So at times I'm just like if we can be brutally honest of course with respect then I think it'll be the turnover of the success rate, rather, would be easier and higher versus if we sugarcoat, because I just want job seekers to be in the space to receive the feedback, especially when you come off, as I've done so many things and I'm qualified and and oh my gosh.
And I'm just like bruh, like okay, you qualified, great, let's talk it through. Yes, you're qualified, but you cannot interview. And I only said that cause I couldn't interview either at one point. Like a whole lot of green couldn't interview. It's a whole skill.
Yeah, it is.
It's like I've learned to do this. It's a skill you have to actively work at. That's what I tell people don't stop applying, don't stop interviewing, because it's going to help you stay sharp to you and learn the stuff that's on the market that they're looking for. And three, if you record yourself, I have a client. His problem is that is he just does not interview well and he does things sometimes where I'm like you're not directly answering the question and you're volunteering stuff that didn't ask you Right.
And I'm like ask answer what they're asking.
Repair it back to me. Yeah, be sure you understand it.
Like one of the I think one of the questions that burns my biscuits, or one of the comments, rather, that I get in messages is no matter the industry, but since we're talking about tech, let's say tech, I want to be, I want to get a tech Chenay, I want to get a tech. Okay, why. What you want to do.
Yeah, tech is very good.
I want an entry level tech job. Okay, what do you want to do? Also, why do you want to get a tech?
Oh good. Kirsten, can you turn the slider back up for Bluetooth? I got the perfect thing Because when you said that, I told my friend I was going to use these recordings because she was going off on her story the other day and I was like, can I use these for a podcast? She was like, of course. Okay, this is the first part, let's listen.
So telling people what I do for a living sometimes gets annoying. I'm going to fan.
Yup.
Because when I tell people I work in cybersecurity because people ask you're at the grocery store, whatever, just small talk, what do you do? I said go and work in cybersecurity. The assumption is that I'm super rich, that I make crazy amounts of money. And then, because normally they'll say that they're like oh my God, you probably make what 300,000 a year. And I'm all like, no, close to it. No, I was like I make good money, but I'm not there yet. Trust me, we would all know. And then I get asked.
Then I get told I want to like oh, how do you get a job in cybersecurity? Because I want to work in cybersecurity, because I want to make a ton of money, blah, blah, blah. Basically it always comes down to they want to make a ton of money, right? So yeah, they assume I make a lot of money and people want to get into cybersecurity because they think it's a lot of money. They think that you get to work remote.
I do work remote, but not everyone does. But you get to work remote and when you work remote, that means you ain't got to work, because I get literally variations of this exact statement when I go why do you want to work in cybersecurity or what's interesting about the field? Because I just want to know, because you told me you want to work in it. I literally get told variations of this statement I want to work in cybersecurity so I can make a ton of money, and then I can get a remote job, and then, since I'm working remote, I can work anywhere I want in the world, and or I can stay at home with my kids and I don't have to pay daycare anymore, because you know, work in remote, blah, blah, blah, blah blah and I get paid a lot of money. So let's unpack that part.
She went off but she was on it and I'm glad you said that, because everybody said why you want to get in. I asked people all the time why you want to be working in the sock, why you want to do red team, why Tell me why A lot of times.
Because companies are going to ask that. Companies are going to ask you why our company, why us? If you can't answer that, what were you talking about?
Yeah, yeah, yeah All the time. It's just craziness, but everybody know we all want to make money Sure, all of us. But that doesn't mean you're going to get it like that much fast. What happened in 2020 to 2022 was a blip in history. Never again are they going to give y'all a lot of money for no skills Exactly.
And things are all about timing too. It's all about timing. You can come in the field at a certain time, make this much money, come in later. You're like well, I'm not making that much money to the person over here. Well, they came in the right time.
At the right time and they were. The other person who stayed long was I realized, hey, that 3% and 5% ain't doing nothing, because that person stayed probably at the company two years and they went to another one and they got a 30% increase. Then they stayed there two years and got another 30% increase, and now they way ahead of you because you had company loyalty, and that's a whole another thing we're going to talk about and I want to ask you something about this. I don't know if I shared this with you or not, and I'm putting this on wax on the podcast In rare instances. I know a lot of times if a company knows who they want, they'll get them, but typically a lot of companies, from what I experienced, typically like to at least let everybody interview them, make their decision, at least once they get the feedback from my experience Now have there ever been instances where y'all sent the offer to somebody knowingly and had the other person interviewing, knowing the other person was in the offer?
So your question is knowing, we already know who we want to pick, so you send an offer to the person that you want to pick, but you let the person complete their interview anyway. That is not good practice, exactly At all.
I've experienced For any company. I've experienced that. And the funny thing is this is the one time where on my end, I'm not making assumptions, because I know, because a person, friends, would work there and got the 411. Because you know, you know in your heart of hearts, when you like everybody talk to you, then killed it, y'all talking about TV shows, you write TV shows, you write down. You was like OK, that's it. And everything I was hearing from that friend of mine was like yo, they loved you. Like they're all recommending like a yes, yes.
And then I get hit up by the recruiter and they're like, well, yeah, they went with the person that's a little stronger or whatever. And I told my friend I was like can't be. And they made a decision and the interviewers didn't even know that an offer went out. So they was pissed because you waste daytime too. And I was like, ok, cool, it is what it is. But I was dumb enough to read interview for a different role in the interview with the person that they picked over me. That's not overqualified for me. They got the complexion for the protection. I'm just saying they do. And even in our process I need to know what I'm going to find it and I'm going to let you see what I sent the recruiter, Because my frustration really was not aimed at the recruiter, it was aimed at them in the process of wasting my time.
But we get the frustration though, Like we're the person who has to take the frustration. Yeah.
Well, I made sure to implicitly say twice hey, this is not aimed at you. You've been great yeah yeah sure. The recruiter was great. They in a sense not really her because she's doing her job, but in a sense they're making her lie and look bad.
Yeah.
Because I'm like this is BS.
That's an integrity issue. Yeah, it's like don't waste somebody's time. That's any company in any industry. You see it. You see, you see and learn certain things when you are a job seeker. And then, like for me, when I was a job seeker and then I switched over into being able to make offers to job seekers, you see a lot of. You see and hear a lot of the things that are where certain certain classes of people do not have to deal with certain things and you won't understand because you are not a minority. So it's, there are just certain things you won't understand and my first exposure to it was in higher education when, you would like I remember being at a company and my mentor telling me someone tried to throw me under the bus. I'm like I'll be the last time.
So, what was? What was interesting about it was my mentor was in the room and she spoke up for me and I was like, bet, appreciate it, but you, but you, you, you hear certain things of how people move when you're not there and you. That's where HR and the recruiters come in and say hold up, we not going to do this. So and I and it's. It's unfortunate that the that most of the time, because we're the recruiters, are the people who has to deliver the news. It is difficult, like yesterday when we were at mixer cloud, this young lady asked Christy and I she mentioned that she had gotten a Dispo email on a Sunday and she was like well, what's that was with? I don't understand why I got this Dispo email on a Sunday. And I explained to her. I said well, you know, you know, you know you're.
It could very well have been that the recruiter, whoever it was that was attached to that role, was preparing for their week. And if they were preparing for their week and it was on a Sunday because sometimes I do it I'll prepare for a week. But there are certain things that I had to tell myself should they? Right now was not the timing to click this button. Wait till Monday to click this button? And so I told the young lady. I said well, whoever is over the position could have very well just been preparing for their week and they could have very well just clicked the button on a Sunday.
Now is to the job seeker. Is that right? Probably not to the person running the position. It's I'm cleaning something off of my plate, so I've had to. So every time I hear that I've had to adopt both angles I've had to adopt. If I click this button on a Sunday, on a Saturday, how is it going to make the person who receives this email feel? And then I said and then I'll sell myself, should they, can this wait till Monday? Yes, if it can wait till Monday, click it on Monday.
Yeah, I see both. I see both angles and I'm not mad. That was just. This is the fact that I had inside information and I read them. They writes I had to Eventually I'm about to do another episode on it, because it's just a lot of stuff between that.
Yeah, I have an episode where I did on being like ghosted. But here's the kicker. This is why I do always work out. I was ghosted, bad for like a sock lead role for Texas Instruments. What, six years ago, six, eight years ago? No, seven, seven, seven. And the guy was telling me yeah, you really got it. We got to meet the people and after that you hear nothing. This one on one. So, my juice, why am I birthed? This one pissed me off because I'm thinking about that Some of the Sunday around my birthday. I had been laid off and I got laid off with in February yeah, officially February, but in January, let me know it's going to be laid off. So I'm outside, I'm having a good time. Oh, yeah, you know I got a job coming. We'll do Keep on emailing what my boy say on stand hey, slim, I wrote you but you still ain't calling. Like I'm feeling like that.
I'm like man, what's going on? I sent the light the most like sucker type of email I could have sent, because at that time you're desperate, your bills are paling up on you, Like I tell people all the time. That's why, like I'm under something like look, during the time I was laid off I had made a decision Cardinal or rent. Once the unemployment is like I'm like what I'm picking? Yeah, and I picked rent.
I was like I was laying something.
I kissed the car, no backup, which I did credit to get hit. But I had to make that decision. Yeah, but I did. I was so mad at that situation until you fast for the couple of months when I started working at a company. I was working at Opta, june 1st 2018. All of us get on the contract and one of the guys that came there actually came from Texas Instruments. Specifically, the company that they used to recruit for Texas Instruments was Talett 101. And he was like I was like you went there. He said you actually worked there with Jack and Nick and whatever he said, man, you did, you actually missed out on something bad, so it was good for you. It was like the person they hired she didn't even know anything. It's trash Everybody's leaving.
So on that moment, I was like I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like. On that moment, I was like that's kind of how it be. Sometimes you write in it and you can't see why is it not? Why is it everything not going right for me? Because I tell my job figures that now I just left the coaching clients and mattress today about like yo, it's Q1. I was like sometimes the job market don't really heat up to about the end of Q1, q2, they get into budgets and Rex, in order. I was like if your LinkedIn has been a little dry, I was like my last couple of weeks have been like popping, like some big stuff. I was like, just take your time.
Sometimes it's not you, cause I told them about the situation. I was telling you about the company and the recruiters. I've told them so many things that I don't really say like on YouTube all the time that I could just share with them. So they know hey, it ain't you. I've told them plenty of times like, hey, I literally got verbal offers for roles and it was like, man, we want to bring you on, but we gotta close the wreck out because we don't know what's gonna happen in the next year.
It's happened. I tell them at all times don't get this shot. It's happened to me. I've told them. I was like listen, my resume is to help me interview for fan companies and I've had hospitals. The other day I partied something at 12, 10 PM, 12, 13. Sorry, we going with other people. I was like I know for a fact y'all don't read it, cause in this region I'm very qualified for that, but I wasn't either here or there. It was just letting them know hey, the stuff that y'all still go through, I go through too, so I'm just letting y'all know I'm no different from y'all yeah.
I definitely got ghosted myself internally, you know.
I was caught for a role with the whole process. Yeah, I remember that.
And they said that, well, the product. So I was trying to become a level two technician there, right, and this role would have been a level three role. So when I was pretty much like the top the top two candidates choices, they said, well, we need for you to reapply for the role. I said wow, the manager wanted to pull the role and lower it down. I said what? So I was confused. I said okay, they said well, let you know when to apply. So I waited by the. I waited like a week. We talked to the recruiter, said hey, when should I reply? Can you give me update? Nothing, this is all internal. Then finally, the manager called me and said oh, we found somebody else.
We work for the same company and I was in the recruiting department for the same company, so you know how wife was like. Who would have recruited?
Right right, I've been through that all type of stuff, like I always managed to find friends in high places Cause then the first two years of their role working for awards now GDIT but at the time of CSRA, internally, two times they played me Cause I was over qualified to be on a service desk. I was to shoot in and get a job. It's only gonna be like an $8,000 increase. Working messaging the dude they used to work on head that's with me was like the manager. They said I got you. They stopped me from interviewing for that because I think at the time OPM had a hack and they knew they couldn't bring any other people in because of that. But I'm like which I could have did was say we know you want to leave over here. We're going to give you a raise cause you're already an exceptional performer and we're trying to like keep you over here. They never tried to do that. Second time was they knew I wanted to work in security. They told them they wouldn't let me go cause I was one of the good people and I had a hunch about this and another guy that was on the floor with me did not even had the credentials I had and he got to go and I was like I was like that's my man's and everything, but how he went over me. And then that's when the little birdie and them tell me like yeah, they was talking was like no, we're not gonna let him go. He performed good, he can go. And I was like bro, so if you're going to do that, you ain't going to never say hey, we know you're going to get a big raise, let's do this.
I had like around that time I have felt like the teacher on, lean on me. When he went and flipped Mr Clark desk over, I was like I was. I said I realized I had bills but I was about this close. I said Randolph, see me Cause. I went in and asked him like yo, hey, you, you heard anything about it. The recruiter said like you know, y'all told him like, like, don't interview me cause I got you know this going on. I don't know nothing about it. See, all you got to do. Like, if I'm asking you, I already know the answer.
And after that they was they was dead.
I mean I just I was like I'm I'm getting the Texas one way or another and then it's going to be out for y'all, cause y'all, y'all played, y'all selves. But that's the crazy thing too. It was like everybody just goes through it. But also that's when I'm younger. So at that time what 20, 22, 23, 24, however old I am so I'm younger than so. I don't know how to make sure I get outside of where I'm working more visibility in other areas so I can get people to advocate for me and say, no, we want him, cause if I, if I go back and replay that, I stay, cause I used to work like overnight and all these different times I stay, find the people that's over there and really just build a rapport with them, Like I need you to snatch me away, cause those people that came on to help this and got snatched away and I had been there long. I said I got more clout out of my steel here.
Yeah.
And they used to kill me, and I think that's like the downside about the service desk part of it, because if you're doing a phenomenal job, they're not going to want you to leave or like, try to promote you. So I would see younger guys doing all this amazing work. Ticket numbers are crazy high and when the next time save a new schedule came out where you could work early in the morning and get off early in the day, right, they would apply for those, those, those, those time frames. They wouldn't get them. They were like why not get in these roles, cause you're doing your job, the manager's job as well, doing reports and everything and do everything else on top of that. They move you. So I had to let other people know, like you know you want to make your way for yourself. You know we tell those people's in those in those departments you want to be in and say, hey, can I shout out with y'all? Sometimes you don't have that good manager to back you. You can be stuck in that road for a long time, yeah.
I'll tip you all time. That's one of the biggest. The funniest thing, though, when people are already working, when they come with me, I'm like, hey, have you talked to anybody internally? Did you get the chance to shadow? And I have a client now working with. He's the. He's the one I was talking about earlier about the football analogy, and that's how he initially got this experience he got. Now I was like yo, just we did it like a console and I was like ask them, can you shadow? And they let them and he's been doing really good work for them for a while, but he's just trying to, you know, branch off and get more money. So I'm like you sometimes got the resources you need where you at. You just got to figure out where the resources lie.
That's to be all the time. Every time you're at work and you're trying to get into a certain field, say in tech, I say focusing on your current skill set, getting to that company, then work your way around, communicate, you know, talk to other people in that area if you want to be in and plant your seed. You know, she taught me that. I'm gonna say where you get that from. I get your flowers, man. I get your little flowers.
The recruiter husband is in the building Now, cause he'll be trying to get my props, like I will give.
I will prop him until I can't prop no more. When it's my turn, I'll be like hold up though when you get that from.
Let me shine, let me shine, I'll let you talk, let him land.
Yeah, man, I got the right to land. Look he, the ghostwriter behind recruiter cousin, yeah.
But yeah, yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I could say I learned from her from that, but I try to really push that now. It makes sense. It just makes perfect sense, like you know. Get your foot in the door at least, then work your way around.
I mean, I learned from him a lot too, though.
Really, what you learn.
Knowing that a lot of my what I do is very technical and I am not technical, so there are times when I'm not totally sure on what I'm fully looking for. And because he codes, he'll show me what codes look like and I'll go oh, that's what that look like.
I'm glad you brought that up Because I've realized and I don't wanna say this because it may. You know, it's not gonna come out bad if they kinda grasp what I'm saying there are recruiters that not necessarily technical, but if they're sourcing and recruiting for a role, they know what to get out of the candidate and they'll probably find the right candidate, versus the ones who don't know what they're looking at Because of sometimes what the higher manager has and they don't. They can't really differentiate, cause it may be some stuff that's not the same and you may discount a person that actually can do the role, but a lot of stuff maybe not be on the resume, but they do it already and I've seen that sometimes where some people like dang, how did they not get them? They didn't know how to do it. I know this may not be on their resume and then they're the ones that they talk to and she was like, oh you, oh cool, they're looking for this in all these different things and they're able to pull that out Cause I, like I said the same friend, I'm always messing with him.
He gives a man. It's like man, that's what I like messing with the recruiters, cause I go to back for the recruiters. I say, listen, the recruiters then sourced me and I got my jobs working with the recruiters, like they didn't help me out. He was like, well, I got my job now cause I reached out to the hiring manager and that's how I got my job, which can happen too. He's like, yeah, I never get a job. Talking to recruiters, I'm just like it might just be. Most of the time, I always tell them they might just be your resume.
To be honest, I mean honestly, like I tell people all the time I cannot read in between the lines of your resume, like if it's not there, it's not there. Like, granted, you probably did it, you probably right, most likely you're right that you did it, but if it's not on your resume, I don't know that you did it.
Right, and if you're gonna send it to two types of recruiters you have in-house recruiters and you have headhunters.
Are there.
Yes, there is, go ahead, I'm here for it.
You did. You told me about the headhunters, you did.
Because they got me my promotions, my jobs I've been looking for. Because they will fight for you.
So he was like the Lawrence on Insecure pretty much and he was like me with the headhunter and she was like going out for them, you know.
So I mean they definitely will vouch for you. They'll sit down with you, figure out your needs, what you wanna do, how much money you wanna make, and they have clients, so they'll reach out to the client. I have a perfect candidate for you. This is their resume. Talk to the person. And great personality. Let's go from there.
It definitely works. With that relationship thing, I always tip you you need a middleman Relationship, sometimes, too, in the small tech world, especially if you did good work and you work for a leader that's ascending. If they got the right job for you, you probably don't have to interview hard. It's like I don't care, because if the hiring is a hire manager, I don't care what y'all say. This person did this, this and this for me. I want them. I mean it ain't fair, but if you already got the proof that you didn't get this for this manager?
Yeah, I get, that's true. I've left jobs and I still have the hiring manager's numbers and I still have, you know, we still made email or LinkedIn from time to time. And I've left jobs and I've heard hiring leaders go, shanae, why did you leave? Like, and I've heard you got some bridges to fill, because, good lord. And I'm just like I mean, and I've also had managers that'll say, like, the way you approach your job or the way you approach recruiting is different. And I'm like, well, I'm a creative, so I think creatively. And also, too, I get bored quickly, so I have to be like my mind has to be thinking creatively so I don't get bored with my job, because recruiting is the same thing every single day, so I have to find yeah, so I have to find creative ways to want to do my job and enjoy it every day.
Check you out? Yeah, I know like I was hearing like the recruiters like being reddit and they were all you on Reddit, Mm-mm, really. I'm surprised like Reddit blind Reddit's fake.
Now I know I am not, I'm not on blind, but I'm behind the scenes of blind Like I'll from time to time I'll hit my app and I'll just read what people say and I'll just click on it.
Maybe some hilarious stuff on there. Yeah, I'll text my old manager. She's the director across right now. What up, ashley? I text Ashley all the time about yo, this or that. I try to send in some people. I think that might be good for her org. That I know. And just, we always just talk about the kids and stuff every so often and but, yeah, that's it. And but I wanted to get back on YouTube about both now, with you being in tech industry and you being in tech for years, just being married in tech. Like how is it? Like you know, earlier I brought up about y'all being able to take trips because you both have good incomes. Yeah, does that make it? Let me see what question I want to ask. I want to ask, I guess I would assume, you to understand each other's role, and that also makes it better on y'all, because think about it if you could be with a partner who don't really understand the mental toll you have, or like, if you're, I'm, both of you are remote.
Yes.
Okay so being both remote, but like sometimes you know you go through your moves. I normally get the computer. Sometimes I don't like I come out, it's not me, me, I'm like I don't really. I like hey, hey girls, hey, y'all, I want to see y'all. But then I kind of don't want to talk to the guy for a while. Like I need my space. Like today I worked out of the private office in the Galleria and I was like man, this is perfect. I don't hear nobody crying, nobody took nobody toy. I was like this, all right, right here. But it's like some of that stuff that like no, the misconceptions are like you know, working from home and having somebody not knowing everything that you got going on, or the good thing that you two both work from home is a lot of times the other part of it might think you ain't really working cause you work from home.
Well, we both be, working.
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Sometimes he has to come in my office and go all right, all right, that's it, cause I'm literally either in the middle of something or I'm trying to finish something and I'm like a lot of what people don't understand is that recruiting is a lot of. It is networking and talking to people and moving you all through the process. The other side to that is the administrative side. So there's a lot of the administrative side that we have to finish before our day is done or before our week is done, so we don't have to take it into the next week. And so there are many times where Terrence will come in my office and go all right, babe, that's it.
Let's go have lunch or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, cause you the one that the wake up at 11 at night and send the offers out.
I do, yeah, she do, and there are times when he like thought she was off today.
I'm like I am, I just gotta do this real quick. I just gotta do this real quick.
That's my excuse. A lot of the time. I'm getting so much better with it, though, like fully disconnecting, because I just I know what it's like. Like this will be me on a Friday at 7 pm Eastern Standard Time and I'm sending out offers. I just I know what that feels like Like why would I make my candidate, why would I make them wait the entire weekend?
Hey, when I can send them an offer. I think I got offered on a Friday one time when it was like into here. I was like oh yeah, we finna go eat let's celebrate?
Yeah, you should be go into the weekend celebrating yeah, I know like I had a thought you were talking about. Oh, the only job I was like that with was Optif. It was like LeBron, like I was picking up everything. I'm catching out of rebound, pass my mom assist and I'm shooting. I'm doing everything. And when Day Springs started working there, he was like I was on. Either I was on paternity leave or I was on vacation. He was like, yeah, bro, it's different when you're not here. I was like I know, yeah, I go see how different it is once I'm gone. But after that, everybody's only gotten only what you need High performing in them hours of time. Yo, terrence, if people wanted to right now, let's say they ain't got no experience. They've been working at Walmart for the last three years, but they wanna get into IT. What would you have them do?
Definitely get into a service desk field. I mean that's a great opportunity to get into tech. Again, you don't need much background IT at all. They need people Cause those positions do go quick. I mean they do have people go come in and come out, so they just try and fill as many spots as they can as fast as possible. So that's like your quickest opportunity to get into tech and also get a paycheck to do it. You may not get six figures, but at least you'll get the experience you need to make six figures down the road.
Yeah, so I've been seeing some people that's having even hard times. Letting them help this Interviews.
Yeah, it's all about your interview skills too. So, like my wife, she helps me. If I have to apply for a position, she'll interview me, she'll sit down with me, cause if you have, if you've been at a job for a certain amount of years, you have interviews. So long you lost that skill set. So it's good to, I feel like now is, if you have a job you happy with it, at least interview once a year at any company, don't matter if you want the job or not, this interview, just to make sure your skills sets are still growing. I definitely heard you as well, but there are.
Uh-uh, I ain't crying, I ain't claiming that Y'all heard him say that.
But are there like, for example, how I was talking about earlier, with the course, careers course, with, like, the Azure and the technical systems, like, are there any things that you like advise them to learn?
like on their own. I would say Azure. In my current role I didn't have a background Azure at all, but I saw a need that we needed for the company. I took ownership of that, so I pretty much had to learn Azure from the ground up by watching YouTube videos. It's also helpful to have the tools in front of me to try and do some things, if they actually work, but those YouTube videos really help looking up like articles and everything that really helped and also that Microsoft has like. So no training online. You guys can don't do for free as well. Just get the basic stuff and everything.
Yeah, I'm a big proponent of going with them when it comes to getting hands on experience, like with Sentinel Defender. You can set up Intra Authenticator, thread Explorer, purview and other tools I'm not even naming, but I think they're pretty cool. I know, funny thing enough, I was talking to my friend and I said right now I'm working on okay, how can I help my clients find realistic projects that we can put on the resume? That helps the recruiters and also maybe the interviewers know they have a good grasp of this role, even if they don't have the experience for it. And so I was explaining to him. It's like, hey, what I'm going to do is I'm going to set up like so there's this platform called TriHackMe that everybody uses right, but most of them are doing the same thing. They're just doing the TriHackMe stuff and answering the questions.
I said so I'm gonna take it a step further. I'm gonna show them how okay we answered the questions. Now we're gonna use this specific incidence response open source platform that I can do the incident summary and act like I'm sending it out to the stakeholders Whenever I do a walkthrough video. That is like so if they go through and set it up, they'll understand, kind of like the ins and outs of like, okay, I got an incident, I'm investigating it and now I'm actually doing pretty much the important part that all the execs wanna see. They wanna see, okay, what we find with our updates, what are our like action steps and what are our media steps. What have we done to contain the threat?
So, when you can do that. You may not have the experience, but I'm always telling myself I'm willing to bet Most of the people who are interviewing for this entry level role do not have a project like this on their resume and they would not understand because they don't have the benefit of knowing me for me to tell you hey, do this, bring up this. When they say, okay, what would you do if you found out there was a malicious phishing email and somebody clicked it? What would you do? They don't have me to kind of guide them through that and tell them. So I was like that's the benefit, and if you can show that on your resume, you are not gonna say it's gonna get you the job, but you definitely gonna get more interviews than the person that does not have it at all and they just wanna get a lot of certifications.
They just think they're supposed to interview, because those search mean they have skills.
And now it's all about having those real life experiences, Like even if they're like made up, at least you'll be able to speak to them in the interview. Yeah, when they ask you those questions, oh yeah, I did this in my training so I could go ahead and speak to that. So it comes off a little bit more fluent than you actually do have experience. And there's somebody that's kind of off the head like maybe I would do this right here. So you know what I'm saying. It's confident.
Yeah, definitely Like. For example, I was looking through some of the stuff that Josh teaches in the course and he helps them set up. I think I believe they set up OS Ticket in Azure, but if you go to OS Tickets website, they have a cloud based one that you can just get a 30 day trial on, and when you set it up with your email, now, whatever you forward to the email can make an incident. So I was like, if you wanna get into IT, you can start making your own little tickets from your email about hey, we need this change done on this whole, so you need to do this or we need that so you can start. Hey, I closed out 30 tickets in my environment. I did this. I followed the change process. According to Ido, I documented this. I did that. I did all these different things in JIRA, whatever, but it was okay cool, they gonna hit the ground running.
Yeah yeah, so that's all it is, because I always get the question like, how do I come up with projects? Because you just don't know what those people do on their day to day jobs, and like, if you can figure that out. That's why my main advice is like, hey, go talk to new people.
that's doing the jobs only then ask them yeah, social distancing will, like you know.
Yeah, what skills I need to learn that I don't learn currently, right now, because that's the one hard thing is like sometimes some skills are gate kept. You can't Like all the good EHR stuff they do in healthcare. You can't learn that on your own. You got somebody got to sponsor you for you to learn that, which sucks. But if you can, that's why that's really the bread and butter. Oh yeah.
You know that, epic, you got a job for a while.
I ain't never seen nobody in no epic out of a job.
They doing pretty well, they doing really well. But also I think, like when you're like trying to get into tech, also like you may not know what you want to do. So I think it's like you said, it's good to shadow what people see, what they're doing day to day, because you may not like doing that. Yeah, I mean say I want to be a cyber security person and see what they do. Like I don't want to do that now.
I tell people that all the time say sometimes you think you want to do this, but you don't know. It was like oh yeah, I think y'all are going to do penetration testing and y'all are going to beat Mr Robot. Meanwhile you're going to be sending out these communications and maybe do a scan once, and now you're writing up your findings.
Yeah, boy, not having as much fun as you want to, yeah yeah, but Shanae, on our last episode, I believe we talked about like one of the most interesting calls you ever had, I guess like screening someone before. Now I want to flip it. I want to ask what's your worst call when flipping somebody? I mean, what's your worst call when screening somebody?
When I was in healthcare Lower head Marce. So when I was in healthcare there was this. So we use a pre-screening tool called Modern Hire, and so essentially what that is is I used to work for Levi's and with Levi's they actually did this where you record yourself answering the question. It'd give you a certain amount of time and the person on the other side of the reviewer, who's of course reviewing it, can see, kind of what you say and so they can also see and understand if what you said is on par with what the company is looking for. So I had the task of sending out Modern Hire emails to all of my candidates for various roles. So I used to recruit for patient transport, which had a really high turnover. So I always every week I was sending like my patient transport department shout out to Brandy. My patient transport department was like my Wednesday, so they just got one day with me where I would just front load everybody and just kind of send out a bunch of emails.
I asked one of my other departments if they wanted to do this for one of the leadership roles and the role was like an admin director. So the hiring manager was like of course, that would be great if we can use this to kind of screen in and make sure that we are looking at people fairly and equitably. So this one candidate. She didn't realize that she was being recorded and I think a little bit of privilege started to come out. And so she said something to the effect of I don't even know why I applied here, so I'm not gonna say the company. If you all go on my LinkedIn, most likely know who I'm talking about. So I don't even know why I f-ing applied here. I don't even know why I f-ing applied for this role in the first place.
And her partner came to the screen and was trying to help her like maneuver and try to stop the video or play the video, because she didn't realize it was recording. So my hiring manager says Shene, can we disqualify somebody based on how they screened? I was like, of course I was like, but we want to at least give them a chance. So she said oh, you didn't see the screening video. I was like no, I don't know what she's talking about. She said, okay, go look at the video and then you tell me. I was like all right. So I looked and I recognized her. I was like all right. So I looked and I reviewed it and I went, oh like. I immediately was like, oh my goodness, and so I emailed her. I said you can absolutely disqualify this person based on their response. So that was probably. That was probably my number one and I used to.
I used to use that as an example, but of course I couldn't show the video for confidentiality purposes. But I would use that video as an example of how not to interview or screen. There have been other times where I've used that tool and the person, like this young lady, had a baby on her back. It was another lady. It was another lady who was actually interviewing with the hiring team and I think it was because they were interviewing at the time. We were using Zoom, so I think it was because they were using Zoom that the candidate was so comfortable that she interviewed her pajamas.
There were so many different examples that I'm like y'all have got to be kidding me. So, like in my current role, when I applied in my current role, I sat at my computer in a full suit, like I had to dress on. I had on stockings, like they was going to be able to see my legs, like I literally dressed up to make sure that nothing was out of whack. And there are certain things that I saw when I was in health care that I'm just like y'all want a job, like you've got to be kidding me. But then there are other times when it actually happens, with candidates who are leaders, who feel like I'm a leader. Why do I have to interview? Why do I like you get that? You do get that attitude from people.
Yeah, you know, in tech I don't mean to have so many enemies Like you talking about. Some people have me messed up. I was waking up way before eight o'clock, suited and booted, going there just for you to ghost me that's how to be back in the days. Or going to interview with the suit on, and they got on the polo and jeans. I'm like that. So now you know they get out of me maybe a collar shirt from Express, a briefs yeah, I've been doing this for too long. If it's a little bit prestigious, a little button down, yeah yeah.
I ain't even getting no full piece of suit, because I ain't nobody over the other thing from to have a suit on?
Yeah.
Well, you get that my current role. Actually, they did a really good job with, like, making us really comfortable. So the recruiter was like, be yourself. And I'm like, ok, what does that mean? And so when the interviewers were interviewing me and I saw how relaxed they were, it really genuinely helped that feeling of, oh, take the pressure off and just relax yourself.
And I will say they are amazing at that because I come in on that through that process of how everybody like, like I said, even one person in a loop starting our interview with an icebreaker for my recent podcast. So I did commend them on that because I thought that was like pretty cool. They're like give me the calm down.
I was a little nervous.
I was like.
I've been playing my gang system for years. I'm talking to them and then, once I kind of got it together, I was good.
Yeah, you need the icebreaker. I think I wish a lot of hard management practice, that they'll come in serious and let's talk about something else.
That's why I actually like coaching, because I got stories for days the client of talking to you about did an interview one time with this company to where the person who interviewed him and I'm an advocate for this, your interviewers need to have good people skills yes, they do. Yes, it brought me the wrong way that he told this person about three times hey, you know how's it going, how you doing today Three times and the person never said I'm doing well, or never like addressed that, or not even telling. Just off the base of how they sounding, they are super nervous and not saying it's all right. Man, I know you're a little nervous. Let's let me kind of ask you some regular stuff to kind of get you to stop being so nervous. Like they really grinded, my guess. I told the person who referred that my client there. I said y'all not going to find no good people because that has horrible people skills.
Yeah, I'm in a situation like that Well, interview for a role and I could tell the interviewer doesn't really have people, skills or not, must have had a bad day or something like that. What's happening? And I thought, maybe, felt uncomfortable as a candidate and of course I didn't get the role. But for that same company, smile, smile, smile hired me, but they had a personality, it made me feel comfortable, I was able to express how I am as a you know, as a good candidate and became like the most performing you know, outperforming employee they had.
So yeah, definitely, and now? So I want to ask you a funny one. What's your funniest help? This call story, oh man you be so irritated I?
do I do? Oh man, you think, Um well, okay, here's one. It's kind of short, but I feel like if you are putting a ticket and you have a certain title, certain role, say, like you are an engineer, I expect for you to know some stuff, at least some basic stuff. You're an engineer Even if you don't work on computers, maybe engineer on, like you know, certain machines with a great way.
Before you could finish this answer, just make sure that you're talking generally.
Oh yeah, Well, it's just about a little bit Criminated. So this is his previous job.
No, because when he went in I got to be like wait a minute.
We'll put a. If you say somebody name, we'll do the SpongeBob dolphin sound.
I love it Now. It's happened a couple of years ago.
Okay, for my current role.
Okay, good, yeah, not but they put a ticket in and actually I went and had to go there and go help him. So the issue pretty much was he was trying to trying to move documents from pretty much from one computer to another. I said, well, you can save it to the cloud. We had one drive. He said how do I do that? I'm looking at him like you're an engineer. You make way more than I do. You're going on these money, dollar, you know machines and everything. So why don't you not copy and paste? You know data. So I was very confused with that. So he looking at me, I'm watching, I'm showing him like this how you grab it click hold, drop, click, hold, drop. You know. He like okay, okay, I'm looking like you want to take over now, you know. But he said they're puzzle. I'm sitting like how are you in this role?
Yeah, I think we all have those, I think we all have those times where you you wonder why how did you get here I?
must knew somebody. I knew somebody. So take it from that and then you take it to when you work in cyber. I R in you're seeing the people fall for the dumbest scams ever. Oh yeah, like this is like this. Oh man Lady said something the other day about oh uh, I thought I was calling them the internet people and then they didn't hijack my router.
I'm like, oh, yo, I got another one for you real quick. So this person, they put a ticket in saying that their computer's acting up. So we called them, said hey, what's going on? They said Microsoft call me, said I had a virus on my computer that either remote into my computer. So she followed their instructions, allowed them to, you know, log into a computer. We found out, of course, she had a virus. We shut down her computer. We said bring a computer in, don't turn on to nothing. So a couple of days later she reached out say hey, my computer back, I need my data. She worried about her data. Now I know what she is Did risk the company you know we put within the back of dickman here. So we have a lot of you know, you know data that can't get out there in the world. So eventually that person got let go. You know stuff like that was puzzling to me. Why are you now understanding that the property just calls here?
So yeah, they never understand when I tell people on my show, like outside this portion of like my pod, I also have a portion where we cover, like tech events, security breaches, where you react to content. When I tell them most of the time I said, hey, these big instances, most of the time caused by negligence, People don't believe me. I said I promise to God. Somebody said, hey, we should fix this control right here. Somebody said it Like I shouldn't be able if I'm, if you work for company B and I'm an attacker, I shouldn't, even if I do compromise you, I shouldn't be able to use my laptop to log on to the company, like anything that's proprietary to the company. I should automatically get revoked If I try to do the MFA promise. Like you know, not a company, A own asset. Yeah, it's a simple thing you can put in to stop all that. Yeah.
Companies don't do it.
It's crazy yeah.
I think for me, some of my funniest help this cause was something like we'll have an audit, so we had to put up a you know to put up that. That. That, what's that little thing called? What's somebody calling into the help desk and it's robotic like a automated. Yeah, I can't think of the exact time where we have to put one of those up and they'll call in hey, I can't check my email. Hey, we can't check it either. The whole TSA network is down.
Network is down. We can't see it resolved. Or they or they or they was working from home.
Hey, um, I can't. I can't find, I can't search YouTube or something. Cause like the security team would go through and block. Like YouTube and Comcast, we can't either. Hey, I can't get on in there. Hey, you caught your ISP. Like we can't help you dog, yeah, like all types of stuff. The funniest one was a woman trying to take a picture of her, a woman trying to tell me that her password was her username. And this is when I was on my way out of the help desk and, mind you, I used to support TSA screeners. It really are the big admin people in all the airports worldwide, and so I was like every time I like fly, I was like man, these are people, that's, that's making sure we ain't got no weapons on us.
He was over it at that point.
But I was like okay, you know what Cause, then help us. You're not supposed to hang up on people. I said you know what I hung up? I said what they going to do? Fire me. I was like I already gone.
I had a lot of fun I was.
I was hanging up on everybody what you think you're going to say this to me.
Yeah, yeah, I was talking to people at the time like the service that's. It's not hard. The people that you have to support make your job harder than when it should be. Yeah.
Cause you you're a log on to somebody saying, okay, go to Google Chrome. What's Google Chrome? What you mean? You don't know what Google Chrome means.
Oh, my God, oh, I'll have those stories too, like file on. Go to your file explorer. What was that? It's the envelope, the I'm like.
I'm like, I'm like, press the windows button. I was like, oh, you want to cause? He read before defense.
Maybe they don't know your terminology.
It's fine, it's fine.
They use the internet all the time.
It was like using every day everything. So I left my my old supervisor. He said anytime you get a call as soon as you realize they have no clue. Remote to the computer.
Thanks, regardless of what the issue is we used to use before, like Skype and stuff. We were using Microsoft communicator, so this predates teams and I'm like you don't communicate her. Let me just promote in.
I was like I can't deal with this. I can't. I could navigate you this and fix it, but sometimes you know, in good times, like someone's time for lunch or a bit of times where I didn't deal, like three, four calls and the person over me selling a car Okay, okay, ben, watch this. All right, cool, you know, I stay on the line while you reset.
Yeah, that was the best thing about Kodak. When we worked at Kodak, if you had, if we had to keep doing reboots yeah, rebooted.
Oh yeah, it won't take about 10 minutes. You know. You know like another worst user you have to support is ones that don't want to take the information that you're giving them, like, for example, my previous jobs. Somebody would call. They would say hey, I'm at home working and every time I'm like working on my VPN disconnects. Can you help me? Now I know what the issue is. I don't want to hear it.
Now I tell them the issue is I had to say the same the issue is your router.
My router works fine. My other computers, but they don't have VPN. Vpn takes up so much data, so your router's having a hard time saying connected. I said once I got me a new router I didn't have the issue anymore. But people still, to this day have a hard time understanding that when you had that issue A lot of times, it's most likely a router. I said it's how you resolve it. Connect your computer directly to your motor. That shuts them up every time.
Yeah, I don't want to do that.
Yeah.
You just trying to tell me some information that I don't want to hear. I was like, listen, you got it.
Yeah Well, I'm not customer Y'all just going to be mad at, because when I'm home I be like, wait what?
Here we'll put you on mute.
I'll be like here do this, babe, it's right here.
Do this, my girl. I don't know how to forward that Like first of three dots.
That's how you do it. I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you how to do it. But I want to ask you all this real quick, because we know, since I did go to Mr Cloud and I made the joke about it being speed dating for the techies that are looking for love and I may say this is a little bit more I might aim more at you for you being a woman, so they can listen to you, an actual married woman. We know a lot of them are getting the bag, as they say.
A lot of married women.
No, no, no, I want you to. I'm asking you these questions. I'm referencing them as giving single women advice that I'm looking to hopefully get married. We know a lot of them are getting the bag, but they also want the person they're with to have the same said bag. But we know statistically that it's not add up.
How would you encourage them to find a partner that's going to protect the tech profession, provide for them that the stuff they need not they won't? How would you tell them that? Because I know a lot of them on Tik Tok and they want to be in a soft girl era.
So my so one. I never imagined being in tech this kind of like, literally I never imagined. I always wanted to be an attorney. That was the only thing I ever wanted to do. I actually wanted to be a judge, first African American woman on the Supreme Court Homie beat me to it, um I.
And then I used to say I want my husband to be a mechanic. I used to always say that, and it wasn't that, it wasn't the mechanic like job itself, it was more or less the hard work of the mechanic. It was the grit of a mechanic. It was the getting dirty, not not being afraid to genuinely get down and under something and through something and work yourself through something. So I think it was. I think I was aiming more toward the process of a mechanic and how they take to fix something versus the actual job itself. Granted, mechanics are great people. So when, when it comes to like wanting your partner, whatever your part, whatever your partner is, and what that looks like to you, I like this, this whole thing about cheesecake factory and not wanting to go to the cheesecake factory, we go all the time if he packs.
That's my favorite work and for me, honestly, our first date was Applebee's Excuse me for our first day being Applebee's and I married the man in my dreams. So and I married. I married a man who is a man's man, who protects me, who supports me, who pushes me, who catches me, because there are a lot of things when you're a recruiter, cousin, or your HD or your whatever your brand is, there are, there are a lot of things that come at you that the public don't know about, and so you need that person who was solid. In that person being solid, do you care whether he is a mechanic or if he works at Family Dollar, like in my mind? I'm in my mind. I want a man, wanted a man who loved me, adored me, put me first, came home, take, takes care of our family, loves his family, and so to me and this could very well be just my preference and I'm okay with that, and if y'all come at me, that's fine because, again, married the man in my dreams, so we need the same.
It for me for me, it's if my husband worked at Family Dollar because he wanted to take care of our family and he was a cashier at Family Dollar and he was happy with that, or if he was a manager at a fast food chain and he was happy with that. Who am I to be like? Oh, you're not enough. Like who am I to be like? Oh you, the job that you have is not, as is not, prestigious enough. Like who am I Like?
I literally I went to there's a, there's a breakfast spot, or like a very healthy breakfast spot that by our house called a happy inhale. Shout out happy inhale, because we absolutely love happy inhale. So if y'all ever in North Carolina R-D-U area, check out happy inhale, because it's amazing. I watched, I literally was. I was ordering my food and I watched how happy all of them were and I said to myself, if all of these people are happy and happy inhale and they're with somebody who is, who does not accept the fact that they absolutely, even if they don't love what they do, in the grand scheme of this is not the career that I want, but right now I am happy in my job.
Who am I to be like? Oh, your job is not prestigious enough. So for me it's been, it's always been. I never wanted someone who was a doctor or a lawyer or getting a tech bag, or he had to have cars on cars although one body can drive a car at a time, like it's in my mind, I'm just like there are a lot of unrealistic expectations that men put on women and women put on men, and I do feel like if we come together to balance each other and not have this idea of he needs to be this, this, this, this and this, well, what if he's not? What happens? Does he love you less? Do you love him less?
Because there are times when, when I'm sure my husband had expectations of his wife, I had expectations of my husband and I fell short of those expectations. It's the same for him. Does he fall short of certain things that I would want him to do the way I want him to do it? Yes, do I fall short of certain things the way he wants me to do certain things? Yes, literally. When him and I were dating, I didn't have a job. When we were engaged, I didn't have a job. Did I have more education. Yep, was he holding down the house? Yes, he worked at a prestigious hospital. He's the one who got me into recruiting in the first place. So it's, it's the, it's the idea that these unrealistic expectations, these fantasy movie expectations that we put on each other, that is extremely like, so out there, that that I won't say y'all, I will say us because I've done it too. So I would never say, I would never tell anyone something that I did not have to overcome myself. There are times when we want a specific thing, and what if that specific thing does not turn out the way we want it to turn out? Is that specific thing any less beautiful? Is it any less gorgeous or prestigious or unique? Is it anything less anything? We had very hard conversations when we first started. I mean, cool Lord. We had really hard conversations to a point where and I'm comfortable enough to say this I struggled with my identity at one point and I had to tell my husband like dog, I don't really know if I like a man or a woman, I don't.
I don't, because something happened. Nothing happened to me physically, but something happened to me spiritually and emotionally that I could not like understand how I felt what was going on with me. I was extremely like. All of us have this place in our lives where we were extremely lost. And that's where I was. And I told him. I said real talk, I don't know where I am right now. I'm spiritually lost, I'm mentally lost, I'm emotionally lost and I don't know. I don't know me right now. And every single time I said it he was just like okay, come here, come on, and it was all right, bring it in. It was every time it was bring it in.
So I don't know if his idea of his wife was someone who did not struggle with that at one point in her life.
If it wasn't cool, I might have fallen short of that expectation, but he decided to love what is still beautiful in his eyes, regardless if I was meeting his expectation in the moment or not, and it's the same for him.
So, seeing all that, to say that and again, I always put myself out there because I would never tell someone something that I have not had to overcome myself. And in learning who I am, I am a married woman who had to overcome a lot of different things, whether that be identity, whether that be professionally, whether it be things with my family, things with friends. All of us have had to overcome a lot of different things, and so I genuinely want women to understand that you want a man, or whoever your partner is, to be there for you, regardless of what you're in. And that's how my last relationship ended. That's why I wasn't married the first time, because I didn't feel like the person that I was going to marry wasn't there when I was in the thick of it and trying to understand. And while he decided to step up, there are many people who decided to leave. So it's, would you prefer someone who has the bag, so to speak, financially, and someone who can drive all these different cars again, one body, one car at a time.
It's like it's the idea of being pampered and all of these different things, but on the inside you are dying. What's more important? So when I said so, rounding that out all out, when I say I wanted a mechanic, my mechanic could have also very well been a family dollar cashier. He could have also been someone who is a serial entrepreneur. He could have also been someone who a freaking gardener for crying out loud, as long as you love what you do, who am I to be like that ain't procedure.
Like they say in the Bible, or a carpenter.
Or a carpenter, the man who saved us.
Let me see this play real quick. I was trying to play this the whole time for her Big that's funny.
I mean that I had to play that. I mean that, like I genuinely mean that Was my expectation of my husband that he would be a Raggedy Patriots fan.
Let me find a board game.
No.
Haters gonna hate.
Whatever I mean. Did I know that he was gonna turn me on to actually liking the office? Yes, I admitted it on camera, Cause I would not admit it at home.
I never watched it.
It's in the office. It's in the main show.
It is.
But I'm saying all this to say that I think all of us have different expectations and I think that's okay. But in your expectation, there are times when your partner is not going to meet that expectation in the moment. Are they any less worthy of you loving them, regardless of whether they're meeting your expectation in the moment or not? There have been times where I have treated this man like shit, and partly because of my attitude. Did he love me any less? No, did he tell me about myself? Yup.
We got to Yup, and that's the dynamic too. I'm able to do the same thing is because of I was like. I guess at this point you can say it's a privilege, like my parents are not rich or nothing blue collar people but they still together the thick of it.
Times when pops got laid off, wouldn't work in making the money he used to make and mom holding it down. Vice versa, when she was raising my siblings and he was working. I've seen it all, seen them get into it, nothing disrespectful or whatever. But as a man, learn how to be stoic and control your emotions and not going to be still being a man the next day. Now for women, I'm not sure being sexist, but I know y'all operate a little different.
Y'all got to be held down to that. I got a process. I got a process. I do.
I got to sometimes take me to the next day to like I got to wake up brand new day and we'll talk it through. But I genuinely want. All of us have different expectations and I'm sure many women are going to disagree with me when I say family dollar cashier versus a mechanic, shanae, you ain't you? You lying? You don't really want no family dollar cashier. Do I want any person that I love, regardless of who you are in my life, to strive for more? Yeah, of course, but if you are happy with who you are, where you are and how you are, and I choose to accept that, I also don't have I also don't think I have the authority to to hold against you who you are, what you are and how you are, when I have chosen to accept you.
Yeah, I totally agree, that was, that was wonderful.
Yeah.
What you got to add on to that. Go ahead, the cherry on top.
I would definitely say, like having expectations for a person is OK, but yeah, put on yourself. So say if you were a software engineer making 300 K a year, right, you will smile. Making that same amount of money right, that sounds good. But say if you meet somebody that's CEO, making two million dollars a year, they're looking at you like you ain't got nothing. But so what you want them to treat you, how you will treat somebody else that will make that much as you make them. So you got to get that stuff too.
So yeah, I say that a lot, I say and I'm going to message you a little bit Like I was, like I'm going to what should I listen to? The guy father when he was alive. So, because he used to tell women that on time, like women would feel like he was like no, this man is hardworking man, maybe 60, 70 thousand dollars a year. He's just a plumber, that's all he is. Because the women are say, oh, I know I can motivate him. He said, no, all this man want to do work, come home and do this. And I felt you on that, right, I felt you on that because sometimes they just trying to change you or something else.
Well, why is that not enough?
Yeah, because say that person is making all this money you want them to make Y'all get married, have some kids. Life happens make lose that time when he was bringing in. Do you love him less? Yeah, like what do you do with that now?
And the different thing you know you also bring into is like women, men want these very successful partners. They don't realize all the stuff in the back end that go with it. So where one person just working come home, that person who got a brand, who's making content, doing that, he's making a lot of sacrifices sometimes to get whatever vision he has for his family, that he has to do, and some women, some men, aren't ready for that. They don't know what. I'll go into that. Because they look at the celebrities and they don't see, like they see maybe LeBron with his family, but don't see out of times LeBron and Brunny and them is moving. They not home Savannah with the kids. He's working, he's doing all the stuff he's doing. Or they see how many times that you got to stay in practice or like even the times back when I was like I act, a musician or working, going to work out, we got crowd rehearsal. Then we got musicians rehearsal, we got show early, all these different things that take for you to be good. Or outside of that, like we talk about being a tech or sale. Like you know, we spend a ton of nights. I got to work on these resumes. I need to do this lab. I need to do this. I got a business here as I got to do this interview. I got a prep People not seeing all that part of stuff that you kind of be like the good and the bad and they not ready for it.
It's not, like you said, expectations. Yeah, some people expectations like, oh, we just going to be cute on TikTok, we're going to have a nice car. Yeah, all our kids and stuff going to be cute, private school, fresh cut, like all that TikTok day in the life. That's what a lot of people are living for it because they don't understand and that's because they're trying to get something that maybe they don't know what they actually need.
Like y'all have no idea. Full, full transparency. I can say it because my husband doesn't deal with it, I do, you deal with it because you're with me, so but it's me so we don't have children yet because I, my body, is not doing it Right. So the idea of when we found out that it was me, I had to swallow that Right, the woman, the woman, it is the hardest thing to sit with and accept the fact that the woman's body is not doing it, like that is a hard thing to hard pill to swallow. And so, even before we found this out, we had to have a conversation and I said I did not marry you. So he said he. He said, babe, I didn't marry you with the idea that we were have children. I married you because I love you. And I said, okay, I realized that I did not say that to you either. So let me say it now I married you not because of the prospect of having children, but I married you because I love you. Right, if we have children, great. If we don't have children, we still love each other. So so, which with everyone also doesn't see. So we get a lot of like oh, I saw a, found your tick tock. Oh my gosh, y'all are so funny, but y'all don't know the tears I cry because I can't get as many children yet.
So y'all don't y'all don't fully understand what it's taking to be a wife and to really accept the fact that there are certain things that you have to deal with together. And again, if the mechanic or that cashier is going to deal with that, but the millionaire won't, it's, it's, it's, it's. It is a lonely place, unless you either find other women who feel how you feel, or your spouse completely understands. Medically, right now, I take appeal a couple of times a week in the hopes that, at some point, my husband and I will conceive, but it's also. It's also a very sensitive topic, because I keep hearing this I don't want, I don't want to go to the cheesecake factory, I don't want to do this, and I'm just like, okay. So what happens, though, sis? What happens when you can't have children and he really wants kids, and he started treating you like crap?
because, because your body's not doing it. What happens?
Yeah, I've seen that before. It has happened to like. I've seen a millionaire was saying this you know Instagram model, you know he wouldn't have a kid. She can't have kids to the curve. Yeah, you know it happens.
So for me it's if my mechanic, or if my family dollar cashier, or if my IT analysts, if my field desk technician, if my cost in a technician which is everything that Terrence has been if he's going to love me through that. I don't want no millionaire.
Yeah, yeah. I think that's a. I think that's a powerful statement. I think who was meant for it Gonna get it, yeah. Who it ain't meant for, they ain't going to get it. Yeah, it take them a little longer to get it. I tell them all the time as long as you find you somebody like and we're going to get to the rapper, because these are the things I'll be like oh my gosh, like y'all are never. Oh, is it a shorter? Now one I'll keep talking. It's still recording, so it's cool to be by the wrap up anyway. But I say that to them all the time like, as long as you found somebody that was already just taking care of themselves as an adult already, what are you looking for?
Yeah, yeah, after that, that's definitely true.
I was telling a young lady she was talking another day about a story about you know different things about dating and the text bracket, which I understand, I get it there should be some type of way where hopefully like whether you know you can't work or y'all get married or something to be able to take care of the family.
Yeah, sure, sure.
Some stuff is all once. It's not neat.
Sure, you gotta have those hard conversations too, cause say, if you do find somebody that has everything you're looking for, you have everything they're looking for. You don't have a conversation with like, say, one of y'all lose one of those at those assets. Yeah, you know what do you do? Cause I saw stories where the other man was in California beautiful family making all this money, right, wife wasn't working, lost his job. He can't handle it. He wants kids to go through what he went through. He was a kid. So this guy committed suicide, killed his family, killed himself. Yeah, so some people can't handle that. So you have that conversation. You got to.
And you got to have a partner. That's like. You know. It's a thing sometimes like you got to say hey, I know you want it, but we don't need that, it don't make sense for us to get it.
And he'll tell me that, yeah, He'll tell me that in a heartbeat He'll be like, babe, we can't do that right now and I'm like, okay, yeah.
Like we had the conversation the other day, I gave her one of my credit cards to do something. I don't actually look at what you buy because I'm not. I don't care about the money.
I do know I got to pay it back Right, so I was like I don't mind you do, but if you know you in the day when you just a swipe and a swipe and let me know, that way I can go ahead and hit the balance before it gets whatever it needs to get to. And at first it's kind of thought like I was kind of fussing, that I'm like not fussing, I'm explaining something to you that makes sense. One day you're going to realize that the way that I try to be financially responsible is going to be something you admire even more, because I'm not just doing everything just because you want me to do it, Not because no one. I never let nobody. I learned a long time ago. I'm not going to let nobody spend the money I work for. It's what it is. You can get mad or whatever, but so when you can stand on business that they say I'm like you can usually be mad at me for a little while. When we get it, we get it yeah.
He normally don't care if I'm mad at him. Normally he'd be like when she read it should come yeah.
I'd be like that too, only if I feel like I'm in the right. But of course, but like you can feel that you can cut that tension with a knife sometime in the house when people manage it Like, I'll be the person like man I ain't trying to be man to the next day and she'd be like I ain't ready to talk yet We'll talk tomorrow.
I'm like yeah.
Yeah.
Usually man. We will move forward with it, yeah.
Cause.
I always get an example Cause we got a PowerPoint presentation on how you made it.
You said that Exactly.
And it's especially when I'm saying, well, this is why I did that, this is why I felt like that, and you just not listening to it. Well, you still did this. I'm like, okay, my example is always when Rafiki hit Simba and he said what you hit me for, and he said it doesn't matter, it's in the past. I'm like it's all, it's in the past. Now we can't change it. We can keep getting mad about it. That's how I get over stuff. Like sometimes I was like I can't change it. I didn't react the way I wanted to, but at that moment I felt like this.
And those are like real things. You got to be honest, like being expressing with yourself. Like I don't always respond the way I need to. Sometimes I you said something, I thought you said this and you know, or you're trying to say this to me. I'm trying to say, well, you know what it is. I'm pumping my chest out. You're trying to say this Like it's a lot of stuff and you just got to like you say the mechanic, the ups and the downs, and just two people that want to work it. I tell people all the time you just need two people that want to work it out together.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's what you need. A lot of people want to give up on this quit as soon as they have that disagreement, they want to make it hard on what it needs to be.
So yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, guys, this has been another episode of the textual talk. Honestly, this talk could probably go on for two more hours, but we got to end it. Man, it's getting late, we got to go eat, but I appreciate everybody that tuned in. Y'all know where to find me at textualtalkcom, textual chat on all socials and even though y'all know who the recruiter cousin is for the listeners, if you want to tell them how to follow you.
Sure, so you can follow me on IG at recruiter cousin. Linkedin is my first name Shanae, my last name Erkard, and then TikTok at recruiter cousin and YouTube at recruiter cousin consultant.
Do you have any social media talents?
LinkedIn found me on there, okay.
I have it right there in the description and also leave us a comment if you think the Patriots is trash, because I think they- big trash, I agree, big trash.
The Philadelphia Eagles, the gold.
Exile three of them because they were really for them, because they were cheating.
So really too.
Philadelphia.
Eagles.
It's champs.
Deflate gate spy gate, the tuck rule.
We just watched the documentary about the tuck rule too.
It's amazing. It's definitely cheating the greatest dinosaur on the side.
I'm getting the most respect out of me for going to Tampa Bay and winning.
Yeah, Everybody said Tunkie winning nowhere else, but he did. I liked that one.
All the other ones from billy checking them be cheating and then air out the boss. It was easy to catch.
Yeah, big trash. Watch the documentary on Apple TV.
Y'all see, y'all see. You know what I'm saying, but I appreciate y'all for rocking with us. Until the next time, let's stay textual and we out Peace no-transcript.
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