Looking for a Job in Government Relations? Matthew Guilbault has Some Very Good Advice to Share

[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of The Political Life. Today, we are having someone back on the podcast who was one of our first guests that we had. We have Matthew Guilbault. Do you

[00:00:31] go by Matt or Matthew? I don't have a strong preference, but go ahead and call me Matthew. Matthew Guilbault, I first interviewed him in Los Angeles when we were at NCSL back in 2018.

[00:00:43] I think he was maybe the fifth or sixth guest that I had on the show. Basically, we talked about planes and motorcycles, which are Matthew's hobbies. All I remember is that your dad being a pilot and

[00:00:59] you going up in an instructor taking you up when you were 13 and you're coming back, he basically let you fly. Then when you're coming back in, he said, okay, land the plane. Yeah, he did.

[00:01:12] And I thought, boy, that's some way to learn how to fly. How is your hobbies of flying and motorcycles these days? They're still going strong, Jim. I'm still enjoying it and living life.

[00:01:26] That's great. Matthew, the reason I want to have you on and to tell listeners is that you recently went through a job search. I just thought we would talk to you about that process.

[00:01:43] I think for you it lasted, I don't know, three to six months. Is that right, the job search? Yeah, it's felt like 10 years, but yeah. Okay. Well, so there were layoffs at your

[00:01:56] employer. You got laid off. I know that at the time you told me they were very generous and you got a severance package, but it came a little bit out of the blue. Things were going great.

[00:02:09] They announced they're going to have layoffs. They have layoffs. You're one of the employees who gets laid off and all of a sudden you find yourself dusting up your resume and looking

[00:02:19] for a job. I guess why don't we start with after you're laid off, how do you begin the job search? I guess first thing was to work on your resume and your LinkedIn profile.

[00:02:33] Yeah, the funny thing was, Jim, to be honest with you, I had never been laid off before. As we talked about, I worked for small and not-for-profits, regional and not-for-profits and always knew everybody that I was working with and didn't work for a national company.

[00:02:48] When I moved into an international company, I thought, oh, this is fantastic. Things were going swimmingly. The reviewers were coming back great. I really honestly didn't see this coming. I had plans on staying there until retirement. I was like, this is where I want to

[00:03:06] be. This is really working well for me. My boss likes me. I'm getting good reviews. I'm getting pay increases. I'm getting additional responsibilities. And then, woof, out of the blue this came and hit me. I got to tell you a couple of things

[00:03:23] happened. The first one that happened was that I internalized that. I said, holy cow, what did I do wrong? I said, this must be me because I'm not used to layoffs.

[00:03:34] And I said, am I not self-aware? Am I not aware of what was going on? Did I miss something? And it took me, it was a gut punch for me, both personally and professionally.

[00:03:49] And I talked to a lot of people who had worked their entire career in corporate and said, oh, no, no, no, Matt, this is not you. I've been laid off five times or I've been

[00:03:58] laid off. Everybody that I've talked to that worked in corporate has been laid off. I don't know if it necessarily made me feel any better, but at least it helped me deal with, I guess, the blow and the internalization of that and the personal hit that I took

[00:04:15] in terms of thinking, well, this is me. And realizing that this is kind of par for the course with corporate America, at least in terms of the people that I spoke with.

[00:04:25] And then the second thing is what you just talked about was now it was a scramble to get myself up to speed and back into the market and marketable again. And a little foreshadowing,

[00:04:39] I found myself well behind the eight ball is most of us do who are in a career and put it on cruise control and think, oh, well, this is where I'm going to retire and this is going to be great.

[00:04:49] And I guess one of the lessons that I learned was don't ever get in that situation again because it is a hole that you need to climb out of. And when you're facing a date certain

[00:05:03] that income is going to stop coming to you, you really can't afford to be behind the eight ball and the thing you need to be able to hit the ground running and have your LinkedIn profile

[00:05:13] optimized enough to speed and have your resume done and things like that. But you're 100% right. That's the first thing I did was pull out this old resume and dust it off. And it was

[00:05:22] probably on paper and it was not optimized. And immediately went to school on what do I need to know to get back into the job market in 2023, end of 2022, beginning of 2023 because

[00:05:38] it had been five years since I looked for a job. And that was an eternity in the way that things have changed. Yeah. And so did you get some help in updating your resume?

[00:05:51] Yeah, I did actually. One of the things that my prior employer was very generous about in addition to the severance package and things of that nature was a career counseling package which wasn't

[00:06:03] particularly fruitful but the one thing that it did offer was a resume review. So I got to send that off and then have somebody reformat my resume and then send back to me a number

[00:06:14] of suggestions and things of that nature. But it started with there but it didn't end with that. I actually used that as an excuse to go to different, there's a lot of free things on the

[00:06:25] websites that people are looking at resume optimization and I figured I would sprinkle mine around and then take the different thoughts that people had and incorporate them into redrafting the resume and then determine whether I actually wanted to pay somebody to do this

[00:06:42] or not because it is so highly specialized at that point. But yeah, it took a tremendous amount of work and to get it back up to speed where it was something presentable again.

[00:06:54] The funny thing is, funny anecdote, I remember the first resume that I sent to somebody for a job interview immediately after layoff and the recruiter was like, you are perfect for this job. He says, but honestly, he goes, your resume is horrible. You really need to update

[00:07:11] this resume. He goes, I'm not even going to send this off to the employer. He said, get this resume up to speed and then send it back to me. I'll share with you my thoughts on it

[00:07:22] and then we will get polished it up and then send it off. That's how bad it was. Wow, and did you end up hiring someone to help optimize it and what is optimizing your resume?

[00:07:34] I think I did. There was a lot of work involved in it. I know I went through a lot of free sites and I think I actually did pay at the end of the day. Resume optimization is

[00:07:49] the ability of this new program, and I can't remember what it's called right now, but when you apply for a job now online, they all go through the same program. The program

[00:07:59] pulls in your resume that you upload to the site and then it extracts information out of that resume and in the old world that I'm used to, your resume, you used to go to the hiring manager.

[00:08:12] When I hired people, I got a stack of resumes and I went through them with a pencil and I threw a bunch of them out and I made some notes and I was the first one to go through them.

[00:08:20] I quickly learned that that is not the case anymore. Computers and AI go through your resume right now. If you are old school and your resume is not optimized for that, then you- For keywords.

[00:08:33] For keywords and for that particular program, and you can actually take your resume and run it through that program and see what it comes back and see what it tells you. And I would suggest anybody that's in that situation or even just curious that they do that.

[00:08:50] What's- Do you remember the name of the program? I don't remember the name of the program. It may come to me during the interview and if it does, then I'll share it with you.

[00:09:04] Then I've heard also that you can't submit the resume and a PDF. It has to be in words that the AI program can actually scan it, read it. It's not like it will notify you

[00:09:16] that, oh, by the way, you scored a zero because it was a PDF. You just won't score that well. Yeah, but that's a big secret, right? You don't know that. They don't tell you that.

[00:09:23] No, they don't tell you that. So you don't know when you send in your resume online and you upload it. You don't know what the results are going to be unless you've actually gone through and sent your resume through an optimization and they've gotten the

[00:09:35] feedback. So you may just dump it in your resume. So you're sending it as a PDF and scoring very low, but they don't tell you that's why you're scoring low? Oh my God. No, exactly. You just don't make the cut, right? You don't make the AI cut.

[00:09:48] So your resume literally never reaches the desk of the hiring manager or the person who's going through it, the recruiter. So you're basically throwing your resume down this black hole. That's been my experience. Maybe somebody that's an expert at this is going to

[00:10:00] say, oh no, no, you're wrong, but I spent a considerable amount of time and effort going through this kind of stuff and learning it and educating myself on how the whole thing works.

[00:10:10] And that's the conclusion that I came to. So I see a lot of people that are in similar situations that are posting on LinkedIn, hey, I've been unemployed for six months and I haven't gotten any interviews and I got no leads and kind of things like that.

[00:10:22] And I've had friends of mine that have been laid off. And the first thing I say to them is, hey, you need to learn about resume optimization and you need to figure this out because

[00:10:30] you need to get through the gatekeeper and the gatekeeper is no longer human. The gatekeeper is a computer program. And if you're not, if you're, what you're sending them is not optimized for their computer program, you never get the interview in the first place.

[00:10:44] Wow. And so, all right, so you get your resume up to speed. And it's, you now know to send it in a Word document and you're sending it in. I see there's some companies here called Rezzy. There's another one called JobScan.

[00:11:02] Right, right exactly. Yep, I think I've used both of those. Okay, Rezzy, AI. And are you seeing or finding most of the jobs on, where online, on Indeed, LinkedIn? Where are you seeing them? LinkedIn is the big one. I think

[00:11:27] LinkedIn has been the, I've also paused again. Hey, man. Yeah, can we, let's pause for a second here. So, is there anything you can do with the Wi-Fi? What I could do is I could probably stop video and then maybe...

[00:11:40] All right, I'll do this. I'll do the same. That might help. And you, do you, why were paused here? Is there also a window open? What do you mean? For you, like, there's some background noise coming

[00:11:55] in. I don't know if you saw... Oh, yes, there is. Yeah, let me close that window. Your traffic noise and stuff like that, right? Yeah. Okay, yep. I didn't realize my mic was that sensitive.

[00:12:04] Okay. And we closed the subway door as well. Okay. Okay, we're all closed up. That should be better. Great. And we'll turn off the video. And for Brett, our producer, editor, he'll just cut this out.

[00:12:26] No, that's all right. So your last answer got cut off. I'm trying to think of what, I can't remember what I asked you. Oh, no, finding the jobs. You were giving the answer to,

[00:12:36] did you find most of the jobs on LinkedIn or Indeed or online? So go ahead and start that answer over again. Okay, great. Just started right now. Yep. Okay. Yeah, so I found that LinkedIn

[00:12:48] was the most productive in addition to obviously networking. You know, one of the other things that I had to do was after I got to the point where I realized that, hey, this is not, you know,

[00:12:58] anything personal for me and that a lot of other people go through it is to open myself up to the network because when you get laid off your first, I think your first reaction is to be

[00:13:08] a little bit embarrassed about it. And you don't necessarily want to advertise that. But once I got beyond that, I was able to start reaching out to my network and say, hey, here's the situation,

[00:13:19] guys. And I'm looking for my next challenge, right? Or something like that. So I think the combination of networking to the people that you know and LinkedIn were the most productive for me. And then, and as far as you know, seeing jobs, the companies that were actually hiring,

[00:13:38] you would see something on LinkedIn and then you would apply on LinkedIn or whatever site you saw it on and submit your resume. And then you would, would you be doing that a lot submitting resumes?

[00:13:54] Oh, I did a tremendous amount of that. Yeah. Okay. You know, but it didn't start, it didn't stop with just the submitting of the resume either. Because I think if you did that,

[00:14:07] you started the process, but you didn't finish it. So for me, what I found productive was I would, sometimes the LinkedIn indicates who posted the job posting or somebody shared it in a post.

[00:14:23] Then I would reach out individually to that person and say, hey, oh, by the way, found this. I think my experience matches what you're looking for here. I have these connections. I've done this,

[00:14:33] I've done that kind of things like that. And then also reach out to other people that know them in the company and say, hey, oh, by the way, do you know Jim? Do you mind reaching out on

[00:14:46] my behalf, letting him know, hey, Matthew's a good guy. He's got real good experience. I think he would fit well in that role. So it didn't stop with just submitting the resume. That was just the beginning of the process. And then what's it, and then the interviews start?

[00:15:09] So was this like a full-time job for you looking for a job? I worked easily as hard trying to find a job as I did in my prior job. Yeah, it was full-time. I woke up in the morning and this is what I did.

[00:15:24] Optimally your resume and your cover letters are going to be different for the different jobs that you apply to, especially when you submit them. Again, we go back to that AI gatekeeper. They're looking for certain keywords. So you need to incorporate keywords from the job description

[00:15:42] into your resume and your cover letter so the computer will pull them up. So it's not like when you have your resume done, it's done. You have to optimize the resume for

[00:15:52] each one of the jobs that you're applying with as well. And then you get the call back, the first call back. And yeah, I feel like I've become an expert in the process now because I've gone through it so many times that your first interview is really,

[00:16:09] they're looking for any, it's with HR or talent acquisition and it's really just a screening. And they're looking for a reason to either throw you in the S-pile or the no-pile. You're not going to get an answer, you're not going to win the job on the first interview.

[00:16:28] So talking about salary and all this other kind of stuff that's farther down the road. And to be honest with you, a lot of these people don't really have a good fundamental understanding about what the decision entails in the beginning. They just have the job description

[00:16:44] in front of them and they have to go through 60 resumes and figure out who they're going to send to the hiring manager. So that's kind of, for me, that was a learning experience as well

[00:16:53] because you interview differently to a talent person or an HR person on the first go-through than you do when you're actually talking to the team or you're actually talking to the hiring manager. But that's the first step in the process. How do you talk to the screening person?

[00:17:10] Yeah, well you get very familiar with the job description because that's what they're going off of. They don't have any knowledge about what this person does and especially if you're talking about public affairs or government affairs or something, both of us now and most

[00:17:26] of your listeners probably know that most people don't understand what government affairs is or what they do. Internally in companies, this person is assigned to hire people for IT or people for accounting or people for legal and oh by the way we have to hire this

[00:17:43] government affairs person as well and they don't really know what government affairs does. So what you do is you can become very familiar with the job posting and then you learn the keywords and the key phrases that they're looking for in the job description

[00:17:55] and you relate your experience to them and you match up the numbers one by one to the job description in your experience for them and you essentially verbally write their summary about how you are a good candidate to match this particular job description, realizing

[00:18:12] that that's the task that they're tasked with and that's what they need to do. So the easier you make it for them rather than rambling on about oh what do you think

[00:18:21] this is or how much the sour is going to be and blah blah blah this is not the time for that conversation. This is the time to say that I click all the boxes for your job description

[00:18:30] so I can get through this gatekeeper and then onto actually a substantive conversation. I remember talking to friends and family and they'd be like what do you have today and I'm like oh I have an interview and they're like oh my god good luck and I'm like

[00:18:41] it's just with talent. So I just right so I need to get through talent to get actually to get into the meat of the interview but it took me a while to learn that as well.

[00:18:51] Well I was going to say did you learn that from experience or did someone advise you or and they must have gone poorly in the beginning. Yeah they went really poorly in the beginning right because I was old school my resume was

[00:19:03] horrible right and and I didn't realize about this AI and this optimization and how the new world works when you look at for a job so it took me a while. Yeah something that

[00:19:14] that I learned through both experience and research. I did when I got laid off I did a tremendous amount of research. I read blogs and I went on YouTube and found some people that

[00:19:25] were specializing in they were current or past recruiters and would tell you all this information the secrets that you need to know. A lot of the information was just it wasn't really useful but occasionally you would latch onto something that would give you a little bit of insight

[00:19:43] and you say oh that's the way it works and then you would adjust your approach accordingly because you needed to accomplish that particular goal at that particular time to get through the

[00:19:53] process and what it is it's a big process and you gotta see how far you can get down that process to ultimately you know securing the position or closing the deal.

[00:20:03] And then and so if you make it through screening which I have to imagine has got to be you know not easy they have you know as you said 60 applications in front of them and they probably have to send 10 on so they have to eliminate 50 people

[00:20:23] because you know if the company's interviewing 10 people that's a lot. Yeah. So what is the second interview or the first real interview like? Yeah the first real interview for me was in the number of interviews that I went through

[00:20:39] and I gotta tell you I probably went through interviews with close to a dozen companies. Wow. So I did a lot of this is that I'm not just talking about one or two.

[00:20:48] You could write a book. In number of amount of interviews when you talk about the level you know how multiple interviews for each one of these companies the next step was usually with the hiring manager and because the talent would then refer it over to the hiring manager

[00:21:02] and if you made a connection with talent and they liked you right which is a key and thankfully if you're in government affairs that's your that's your job anyway right to be a likable person and to kind of find the connection that occasionally they would share

[00:21:15] little tidbits with you and they'd be like hey I have to call 30 more people but I but I feel like you're really good for this position so I'm going to refer you on

[00:21:22] and other times you wouldn't you just get oh thank you very much and you don't know where you lie and but you soon do because then you just stop getting calls

[00:21:31] but if you could get a call depending on how quickly you get the call this is another thing that I learned from the inside how quickly you get the call after your initial interview

[00:21:41] will tell you where you are on the talent list of people that they're recruiting if they call you back immediately you're probably number one if they wait a week to call you back

[00:21:50] you're probably number two or three um if you are the first one uh or things seem to be moving very quickly that's obviously a very positive sign and they want to close very

[00:22:00] they want to they want to keep everybody else on the string and see if they can close with the number one quickly and first um so very soon after if you if if I established a connection with

[00:22:11] talent they thought I was good for the position my stats matched what they were looking for I got all the keywords in my resume um they would set up a call for the next week with the hiring

[00:22:22] manager and and then you would be able to have some substantive conversation with the hiring manager about okay what does this job really entail by somebody who's looking you know to to fill that role but uh but typically that was the next step for me

[00:22:35] and so the hiring manager so that interview would be um you know not in person it'd be online and and it would last about what like an hour yeah sometimes it would last longer and um

[00:22:47] you know I remember once um I had an interview and it was with the hiring manager and it was a job that I really wanted and uh and it was something that I that met my

[00:22:57] education and my experience qualifications that thought that I was really well qualified for plus a lot of people had told me about this job and said you would be really good at it and they're

[00:23:07] a good company to work for and then um I had the conversation with talent and then the time conversation came up with the hiring manager and uh and I'm in upstate New York and

[00:23:17] and we got literally three feet of snow and we lost power and I lost internet and I didn't have any power internet for the man for the for the interview so I got in my truck in my

[00:23:26] four-wheel drive truck and I drove down into town into into a place where I could get some wi-fi and I actually had the interview online in my car sitting in a snowstorm as we're getting

[00:23:38] three feet of snow but that's that's the that's the level of of desperate that you will go to to try to try to accomplish some of this stuff oh my god uh that's incredible what um

[00:23:52] and then uh and then would there typically be more interviews after you talked to the hiring manager yeah if the hiring manager liked you right then you would go on and and you would do the meet the team

[00:24:03] thing okay and um and I did a lot of those and the funny thing is right for for a newbie like me I'm I'm thinking okay well meet the team means you're hired right I mean how many people are

[00:24:15] going to meet the team oh you know how you you've gone through the talent you've gone through the hiring manager and hiring manager is the one making the ultimate decision if they want you to

[00:24:23] meet the team then you got to be one or two right I mean you're not going to have about 10 people through meet the team so I had high hopes about that and and did a lot of the meet the team

[00:24:32] interviews as well um and that that's kind of another thing too uh another dynamic in terms of how you interview when you meet the team because you know it's a it's kind of a peppering

[00:24:42] and they they they want to see whether you fit in and whether they like you and um you know kind of things like that so it's a different dynamic that you're looking at

[00:24:51] when you do the meet the team interviews but I did a bunch of those as well yeah I can't uh that that's that's gotta be tough um there's two or three people online

[00:25:00] they're all firing off questions uh you know they're um you know and you have the dynamic of the relationship between all of them which has nothing to do with you um

[00:25:13] you know people trying to look smart in front of the boss you know right right you know um you know whatever um and you know the funny thing Jim about this whole process is in every stage

[00:25:25] of this process everybody all the people that you're talking to know what number you are they know whether you're number one whether you're number two or whether you're number three right and you never know you're the only you don't know right you're the only person

[00:25:38] has no idea where you are right I mean you're getting these indications you're like okay things are moving quickly I feel like I'm on the top of the list right yeah but you never know for sure

[00:25:48] but everybody who's just talking to you always knows for sure right yeah so I thought that was kind of a funny dynamic as well yeah um so um and what um what suggestions would you have

[00:26:02] or what did you learn um from you know talking to the hiring manager and then talking to the team are there any you know bright line you know don't do this or definitely do this yeah you know

[00:26:15] part of the experience is what I went through and then the other part is when I actually hired people I was amazed at a number of people that would come in and interview over with a position that

[00:26:24] I posted and I would ask them the simplest questions about okay tell me what you know about this position or tell me what you would know about this company and uh and I would get

[00:26:33] blank stares and real like 30 000 foot general observations um so what I found that worked for me was you know it is a full-time job looking for a job so if I got that far in the interview then

[00:26:47] I would start pouring through the information on the internet or publicly available information and everything that I could find out about what that company was doing and more specifically about

[00:26:58] what the challenges in that role would be in the next six months to the year so what I found successful was um thankfully I found a job so I can let these secrets out now at this point you know it's um

[00:27:11] but I you know I would ask some questions say hey I read that you're working on this project or I read that this is a new you know product that this company is releasing now and I understand

[00:27:21] some of the drawbacks and some of the challenges with it you know can you tell me a little bit about it and people's eyes would perk up and they say wow you really know a lot about what we do

[00:27:31] and um most people don't do that I think they put they put it on autopilot and you know job search is a very active endeavor um and it doesn't stop until you actually close the deal um so yeah

[00:27:45] you're just it when you move on to another phase of the interview it just means more work it just means different work but you got to keep working and I would imagine that when you

[00:27:55] um if you didn't get the job you probably didn't it's not like they're giving you any feedback as to why they went with someone else no no they don't I mean you always get that you get

[00:28:08] the generic once in a while you'll get a call um or once in a while you'll get something you know but but 99 percent of the time you get this generic you know we've decided to go in another

[00:28:20] direction or another candidate fits our you know our requirements better or you know um you know this generic kind of stuff and you know there's been a couple of times that and I don't think it's a bad

[00:28:33] thing recruiters might might um differ with me in this opinion but I don't think it's a bad thing to ask for feedback and I did in a couple of instances where I felt like I moved substantially

[00:28:44] through the process and established a rapport with some of the people and I say hey you know talent I understand that you went in a different direction and no hard feelings right don't burn bridges you'd be surprised the stories that you're anecdotally about people that burn

[00:28:57] bridges and blow up on that kind of stuff but when it's over it's over so you know preserve your integrity and say listen good for you I wish you the best of luck and decisions that you made

[00:29:07] but I still want to be competitive and marketable and is there any observation that you could share with me that would help me to do better um and occasionally you would get a little bit

[00:29:17] of a tidbit but I gotta tell you my instinct has been and as an attorney you know probably comes from being an attorney we are such a litigious society right now that people are nervous about yeah they're

[00:29:29] not gonna need that information yeah they don't want to expose themselves so it's very difficult to get feedback which makes it very difficult to get better right right it'd be interesting if

[00:29:39] you could go back now do you know are you um do you know anyone who ended up getting a job for one that you went for that that you happen to know um have a relationship with um not any

[00:29:54] friends or colleagues that I know who they are but but not like a friend of mine or something that could pick up the phone and be like hey you know and and to be honest with that I don't

[00:30:03] know that I would right right right right I'm very competitive well and and and I mean two things in regards to that one if you went back to the people now one they may not accurately remember

[00:30:16] right why they chose whoever they chose and the difference if you made it to meeting the team the difference was probably very subtle um yeah you know one person connected more with them or

[00:30:31] they thought this would be helpful or they said something that you know um yeah um and so what was it like when you uh finally went into um uh salary negotiations and you're like wow this one seems

[00:30:45] like it's actually gonna happen yeah you know different uh different experiences in different roles um and I got I got to that point a lot um where you know they were like okay you know

[00:30:58] let's talk about salary um the nice thing I think for somebody looking for a job although I don't see it being complied with as much is the requirements that they post the salary range in the in the

[00:31:09] posting now um they do it in New York they do it in a number of other states um but they're moving in that direction and I think that's fair to be honest with you because it allows you as a as a

[00:31:20] perspective candidate not to waste their time applying for a job that pays $50,000 less than you're willing to take right or that you're going to be able to pay um and and I remember that when

[00:31:32] I was posting jobs you know and you know our internal was oh we're just gonna post that our salary is competitive and I'd come you know I'd get resumes with people and I'd be like oh I

[00:31:42] could tell this person is out is overpriced but I'd have my HR column and it's like what's your range and they'd be a hundred thousand dollars more than my top salary was and it's just a

[00:31:51] waste of everybody's time right so um so the posting of the new of the ranges I think is a good move I think it's good for both employers and prospective employees um but I see it being perverted a lot

[00:32:04] because the ranges they're posting are an enormous range just for compliance reasons at this point but it gets yeah it gets a little bit tricky in the in the salary negotiation some of the roles

[00:32:15] are very strict and like hey this is what we're gonna pay and uh and I appreciate the honesty and and then being forthcoming in that regard and others you just got to kind of play the

[00:32:25] play the game and you're like well where do you want to be in the salary and you certainly don't want to upsell yourself or or outsell yourself so you got to fall somewhere in the range and

[00:32:34] you know if if 75 percent of the range is good for you that's probably that's I think from my you know limited amount of experience probably a good place to be um but but I I have a very

[00:32:46] strong feeling that I have lost positions of people who have taken the bottom bottom salary because they can get somebody in that's a little younger that's a little less experience and certainly cheaper and so um and so when when a company when they're typically are they do

[00:33:05] they go into salary negotiations or discussions I guess I should say not negotiations with more than one candidate or do they start with Matthew and if that kind of gets it's not really you're

[00:33:19] not they're not coming to a conclusion then they go to candidate B. Yeah um you know it depends a lot of them to be honest with you I got the salary question in the beginning right in the

[00:33:30] beginning um and I thought okay well this is going to lock me into the salary originally I thought right they're like well what what's your expectation in terms of salary and they always

[00:33:39] ask you that right and then the the canned response is um well I'm sure there's a range but if it's not posted I'm sure there's a range posted for this position are you are you in a position where you

[00:33:50] could share with me what that range is and if they do then your response is well I find that range is going to be acceptable because that's that's what they're doing in talent they just want

[00:33:59] to check it off they want to make sure you're you're within that range so you go through the dance about okay what do you expect and they want you to come back with a number and

[00:34:08] that that number is outside that range then you're you're going to get you're in the no pile right but if your numbers inside the range it is and if you come back and you ask them what the range is

[00:34:17] then you can make sure your numbers in the range or don't give them a number and just say yeah that's fine right um and uh but some of these positions that didn't have a range were we're

[00:34:28] very close to the position that I was in um with my prior employer and uh and I know what the range of those positions are so I wouldn't even go to a number I'd say listen I've been doing this for

[00:34:41] x number of years and I've been working for this company and it's my understanding that this is a very similar position to the role that I had I anticipate the salary range will be will be within

[00:34:52] you know the the range that I was making and that's fully acceptable to me and we would get the checkbox for the yes without ever ever actually talking about a number um but when it comes down

[00:35:03] to the you know to the to the rubber hits the road and you know you got the job and this is how much you're going to get paid and you're going to negotiate that that that gets sticky because um

[00:35:14] you know it's uncomfortable for a lot of people to start talking about that and um and I just I think you have to be bold um you know sometimes you got it you got to

[00:35:24] ask for what you think you deserve and um and that's not easy sometimes especially you've been laid off for six months and you're looking for a job so it gets it gets sticky

[00:35:35] yeah um yeah because you really really want the job yeah well you need the job right it's come to the point where in the beginning you want the job and then you know a certain number of months down the road you need the job right

[00:35:51] and did were any of the interviews in person no zero wow okay yeah um but then again too right I mean in the old school you know I would be working for somebody that was I would go into the office with right

[00:36:11] and now all the jobs I'd interviewed for were remote with the exception of a couple right a couple of them wanted me to come into the office a couple days a week and we negotiated back

[00:36:20] and forth on that and didn't come to a resolution but still the interviews were all were all virtual that's um yeah it's you know it's the brave new world it really is yeah yeah and uh and after

[00:36:36] that whole process how did it feel to finally um uh lay on the job and get the uh get the offer it must have felt pretty good it did it felt good um you know I had at the time I had two offers

[00:36:52] and I had to make a decision in terms of what I thought was a better fit for me and that's what it came down to um you know the salary on the two positions were were quite

[00:37:03] a ways away from each other um and it was not an easy discussion it was not an easy decision for me because it would have been easy just to be like oh well you're going to pay

[00:37:13] this much more so I'm going to go with you but it but the end of the day in my stage in my career it's it's not about that right it's about um and and I and this is a line that I used a lot in the

[00:37:25] interviews but but it's true for me you know I'm not I'm not looking for a job I'm looking you know for something that I can fully I feel fully invested in that I believe in that I can

[00:37:35] advocate for with all of my heart that I can really truly you know um feel like I'm making a difference and so I had to analyze a lot of that stuff to make an ultimate decision in terms

[00:37:47] of where I wanted to go and to be honest with you I took the job that was that that paid less but but felt more comfortable and more fulfilled in in the role oh interesting yeah and what

[00:38:04] what looking back on it now what would you do uh what would you do differently I mean I know you do a number of the you learned along the way but yeah is there anything in addition to

[00:38:15] what you've said so far that you would do differently yeah I would never get myself in a position where I'm unprepared for the marketplace it's it's as simple as that so yeah so good advice yeah I mean

[00:38:27] always be ready always be ready for that and then that's the thing too right I mean if you look at prior generations people we work for companies for 30 years four years 50 years and then they

[00:38:36] retired and they had a pension and now you look at the statistics and and I used to look at um linked in profiles and wonder why people are jumping around so much and I'd be like God why are

[00:38:47] people only working in for two years and three years and five years and they're and they're not being and they're not sticking around that long and I think my conclusion that I came to and I

[00:38:56] might be wrong is it's a more active you know workplace out there and people are I think more actively managing their career rather than we just got a job out of college and this is where

[00:39:08] I'm going to work and they're going to take care of me and they're going to stick around I think it's on both ends you know employees are looking for things that are the next better thing

[00:39:17] and employers to be honest with you are going through layoffs and and it's not and we found out it's not unusual so you know that stability is not there anymore so the biggest lesson

[00:39:29] that I learned and it's been echoed by a number of the blogs and the podcasts and the youtube videos is be an active person in your life in terms of your career and uh and that's the one thing that I

[00:39:41] learned and I think the blessing of all of this is you know I'm a dad and my oldest son is in college and my youngest son is going into college and for me to be able to kind of guide them

[00:39:50] in terms of their careers and say hey let's always keep on keep on top of this right make sure your your LinkedIn profile is always updated make sure your resume is updated take the time to do

[00:40:01] that always keep a foot in the the uh the job search right always be subscribed to the professional LinkedIn and say hey you know send me the job so I'm aware of them because who knows maybe know

[00:40:13] somebody that would fit really well even if it's not just for you um and then a lot of advice that I'm reading and I'm hearing is do interviews right just stay conscious and and current

[00:40:24] with you know the interview process so you don't find yourself behind the eight ball like I did and then have to and then have to play catch up and to be honest with you in terms of

[00:40:33] like your personal anxiety level that helps a lot too right because then if you got that news like I got that news out of the blue unanticipated you know hit me like a ton of bricks kind of

[00:40:43] thing um if I were more up to speed and ready to go it would have been a lighter below does that make sense yeah yeah well Matthew Gilboe that is um great advice and um thank you very

[00:41:00] much for sharing uh that journey with us I think it'll be helpful to people who may are in the job market or people who are heading into the job market obviously it's helpful to people in the

[00:41:13] government affairs space but could be used really for anyone um out there looking for a job so Matthew thank you yeah Jim always a pleasure to speak with you thank you for your time and uh

[00:41:25] for our listeners out there remember you can follow us on twitter and facebook and instagram and you can sign up for email at politicallife.net um we hope you enjoyed the show and we will see you again soon