Mac’s Interview on the Copeland Coaching Podcast

On August 30, 2016 Mac Prichard, founder and publisher of Mac’s List, was interviewed on the Copeland Coaching Podcast, hosted by career coach, Angela Copeland.

In the interview, Angela and Mac discuss:

• Secrets to hacking the hidden job market
• How to master informational interviews
• How long your job search should really take

Transcript

Ben Forstag:

Welcome to Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life. I’m Ben Forstag, Managing Director of Mac’s List. This week, we’re sharing Mac’s interview on the Copeland Coaching Podcast with Angela Copeland. This interview dates from August 30th, 2016.

Male:

Welcome to the Copeland Coaching Podcast, where it’s all about turning your job search into a slam dunk. Your host is Angela Copeland.

Angela Copeland:

Welcome to the Copeland Coaching Podcast. I’m your host, Angela Copeland. Live on the Phone with me today, I have Mac Prichard in Portland, Oregon. Mac is the founder and publisher of Mac’s List. Mac’s List is an online community that connects more than 80,000 passionate, creative professionals a month to meaningful and creative work and careers. He also hosts a career podcast called Find Your Dream Job, a podcast for professionals who are looking for new work, meaningful employment, and an opportunity to make a difference in life. Mac, thanks for joining me today.

Mac Prichard:

Thank you for having me on the show, Angela.

Angela Copeland:

It’s so good to talk with you. We met originally … I guess, we met through email, and then we met again at Podcast Movement, and I got a chance to learn about Mac’s List. I touched on it briefly as I got started but would you share with us a little more about Mac’s List is, what Mac’s List is, and what kind of inspired you to start Mac’s List?

Mac Prichard:

Sure. If your listeners go to MacsList.org, they’ll find an online community. There’s a job board there with about 400 job postings a month. We hear from our readers that they want advice about the nuts and bolts of job hunting and career management, Angela, so we have a blog with weekly posts on job hunting.

We also published a book called Land Your Dream Job in Portland (and Beyond), and we’re bringing out a national edition of that book next year. We have a podcast and every week, we talk to different national experts about job hunting and career management. If you’re in Oregon, we also do about eight events a year that you can attend, and we do live stream them, so they’re available to people to all across the country and the world.

Angela Copeland:

That’s great. What are the events like if we were to come to one of your events?

Mac Prichard:

We have one coming up on September 7th, and it’s about how to get a tech job and we’re doing it in partnership with the technology association of Oregon. We’ll have panel discussion about the ins and outs of looking for technology work in … and particularly for people who are interested in switching careers, who may have skills in marketing or management or human resources.

  They may have worked, say, in the human resour- … I’m sorry, the social services sector or the nonprofit work or government and they want to break into technology. How can they do that? Our panelists will take people through that, as well as take questions from the audience. We also take questions from people who are watching from the live stream as well.

Angela Copeland:

That’s interesting. I understand that a lot of your online community is based in Portland, but not all of it. Is that right?

Mac Prichard:

That is correct. You asked about the history of Mac’s List. It started actually 15 years ago this month. I had been working in the state capital here in Oregon and I’d been commuting down there from Portland, it’s about 45 miles, but I’d always lived in Portland. When I took a job at Portland State University, doing communications for a national juvenile justice reform project, I wanted to stay in touch with my colleagues in government and politics down in the capital. Everybody loves to get job postings.

  That’s never going to go into your spam folder. You’ll open those up and you’re eager to receive them and see who’s moving around or what’s available. I started a very simple list with a few dozen names of people I wanted to remain connected with. It took a long time to grow, Angela. During the course of about eight years, I had less than a thousand subscribers. We turned it into a newsletter and it grew quickly after that. Then when we launched the website six years ago, it really took off. Now as you mentioned, we have about 80,000 monthly visitors to our newsletters, our website, and podcasts and social channels.

  What drove the list is a value that’s really important to me and my team and our company, which is being of service to others. It’s also value that’s good for people who are looking for their next job or thinking about their career. Because when you give your time and ideas to others, either through networking or informational interviews or volunteering, what I see with the job seekers who do that or people who are successful in their careers, they just get so much more back. That’s a fundamental value to Mac’s List and our community and the people who visit our site.

Angela Copeland:

I totally agree. It’s such a good example of turning something that was an interest of yours into a real functioning business that you’re able to use to generate income, essentially.

Mac Prichard:

Yes. It is a for-profit business and we’re in the process, Angela, of becoming a certified benefit corporation. That’s a status that companies that have a social purpose seek, and it means that you’re managing for more than just the bottom line. It is important to be in the black and we do think about profit. It’s a small business, there are four of us, two full-time and two part-time who work on it, but we have a lot of fun together.

Angela Copeland:

That’s really interesting. You mentioned sending out job postings and I know there’s a topic that you’re very passionate about I really want to drill in today, which is the hidden job market. In particular, you talk about hacking the hidden job market. Can you tell those of us, if we haven’t really thought about this before, what do you consider to be the hidden job market?

Mac Prichard:

As you know, I run a job board and I want people to come and visit it. I also know, from working with employers and talking to people and human resources and I know you know this as well, Angela, and many of your listeners, many jobs are never advertised. There are estimates out there that is as many as 80% of open positions never make it to a job board or a newspaper ad, they get filled by word of mouth. Now, there’s no conspiracy here, the reason that happens is people want to manage risk.

  They do that by … when they have an open position, first, by looking to people they know and have worked with, and then they turn to people who are recommended by folks that they trust. Our challenge, when we’re looking for work, is how do we get into the networks of the people who are filling those jobs? It doesn’t have … You have to be related to someone by marriage or had gone to some elite university to crack the hidden job market, but you do have to get yourself into the networks of people who are looking for candidates, so that they have some familiarity with your or you are recommended to them by people they trust.

Angela Copeland:

Yes. It’s interesting, just a couple of days ago, I met with a job seeker who said to me, do you think this is really happening, do you think there really are jobs that are not posted? You mentioned that it could be up to 80%. Where do you think sort of those estimates come from in terms of like how … why do we think it’s so high?

Mac Prichard:

There’s a range of numbers out there and, typically, they’re between 50% and 80%. Again, I would ask people to … your listeners, whatever the number, there’s some proportion of jobs that we’re not seeing if all we’re doing is checking a job board or looking at an old-fashioned newspaper. Ask yourself this, how are you spending your time if you’re looking for work or if you’re thinking about your career and you want to identify that next opportunity in a year or two’s time? If you’re spending 100% of your time looking at job boards or the newspapers, you’re missing out on some number of jobs that could be as many as eight out of 10, maybe it’s three or four out of 10.

  Whatever the proportion, one of them might be the job you really want. Again, our challenge when we’re getting into the job market is we want to have as many options as possible, and we don’t want to limit ourselves just to the jobs that are publicly advertised. The other benefit of going out and looking for hidden jobs is, in order to do it well, you have to be clear about your goals, and you have to engage other people through conversation or through networking or volunteering in your search. When you go out and you tell people what you’re looking for, it’s perfect practice, Angela, for a job interview. It also compels you to get … it makes your elevator pitch so much better.

  You have to sit down with somebody and say, hi, I’m here to talk to you about my interest in working in this field, these are the kinds of opportunities I’d like to explore, here are the questions I have about that, and here’s how I hoped you can help me. The more specific you are in those conversations, whether it’s through informational interviews or casual conversations in their working events or maybe a just a one-on-one conversation with a leader in a field that you’ve met because you’re serving in a committee together in a professional association.

  The more specific you are, the easier you make it for people to say yes to helping you. The more likely you are, not only to find out about jobs that are filled by word of mouth, but you’re just going to be such a better candidate when you’re going through the interview process, whether it’s for a position that was posted on the job board or one that you were told about through your network.

Angela Copeland:

Absolutely. Back to earlier you mentioned managing risk that’s part of where this hidden job market comes from, it almost reminds me a little bit of if I were looking for a new dentist or a new doctor. Typically, I’m not going to just look online for just anyone. I may ask friends if they have someone that they like or that they recommend, because that person is kind of already pre-vetted by the time I talk to them. I think it’s somewhat of a similar concept.

Mac Prichard:

I think that’s exactly right. I happen to be in my 50s, so I’ve been in the workplace for several decades. Even people who are in their 20s, whatever stage we are on our career, I think all of us have had one or more experience or more where we just, by chance, heard about an opportunity and a colleague or a friend or a classmate told us about it, and it seemed like the doors just opened magically because, as you say, we were pre-vetted.

  Often, that happens by chance to everybody once or twice in a 30-year, 40-year career. Here’s the deal, if you’re thoughtful about it and you’ll follow certain principles and strategies, you can make that part of … you can increase the odds of that happening. You should definitely look at job boards and that should always be part of your search, but it shouldn’t be the only strategy that you pursue.

Angela Copeland:

I completely agree. Speaking of job boards, just to take a little bit of a detour, it seems like sometimes the jobs that are on job boards, it almost seems like they’re not really available. Have you ever noticed that, and what do you think about that?

Mac Prichard:

There are certainly positions that may be posted because of company policies or requirements or the organization has a practice of posting every position, and but it also may have a practice of filling jobs, offering jobs first to internal candidates. If you’re out there talking to people inside that organization and working your network, you will find out whether it’s a real opening or there’s already an internal candidate who’s been chosen and the organization is just compelled to advertise the position.

Angela Copeland:

I agree. I think also, I’ve had it happen a couple of times for me, where I was approached by an employer that said, we’re creating this position, we’d like you to apply, and I had already kind of been pre-selected before the position was ever advertised. I imagine, even for some external candidates, that sort of thing may happen. I could see it creates a frustrating situation though when you go out and you look at the job board and you assume that you kind of have a fair shot at it. Maybe you do or maybe you don’t, you don’t always know the difference.

Mac Prichard:

You don’t. Again, if you’re out there networking and talking to people in your field, you’ll have a good understanding of, obviously, not every position. If you’ve got a short-list of three dream organizations or companies you want to work at, then you should be building relationships with people inside those firms, and so that when openings do occur, you know about them before they’re advertised and perhaps they have to be advertised. If you’ve done your work well, you’ll be in the candidate pool and you’ll have a leg up because you’re a known quantity to people inside the organization.

Angela Copeland:

Exactly. When it comes to hacking the hidden job market, it sounds like one of your tips maybe sort of networking. Can you share with us, generally speaking, some of your other tips in terms of how we can really get in there and become that known candidate and hack that hidden job market?

Mac Prichard:

There’s three ways to do it. One is networking. When I say networking, I’m talking about finding events in your field, in your community and going there and talking to people and building connections and relationships with the people that you meet at an industry event. Success is not the number of business cards that you collect at the end of the evening, it’s about making a meaningful connection with people who are peers and colleagues in your field. There are two other ways to do it. One is through volunteering. Find a professional association or other group in your industry and join a committee or volunteer the staff at the reception table or maybe even join the board.

  When you do that, you’ll connect and build relationships with your peers and the movers and shakers in that world, and you’ll demonstrate what you can do and they will think of you when openings pop up in their organizations. The third way, and I’m a big fan of this, is what’s called informational interviews. Sometimes, I think, often, people think about this as well, let’s go out and get coffee, or, gosh, I’d like to pick your brain. An informational interview is a very specific kind of meeting, and the person who asked for, the jobseeker, runs that meeting and they …

  A good successful informational interview, Angela, does three things. It gives you the opportunity to introduce yourself, tell your story, and share your goals. The second thing you can do in an informational interview is ask specific questions that are relevant to your job search. Maybe you want to identify companies that have gotten new customers and are going to be hiring as a result. Maybe you’re switching from one sector to another, you’ve worked in banking and now you want to move into technology. You’ve identified somebody who’s done that and you asked them three or four questions about the challenges they faced and how they overcame them.

  You get insights that are going to be helpful to you in your search. You can identify employers that might be adding jobs soon and begin to add them to your targets and reaching out and build relationships with people inside those firms. The third thing you’d do in an informational interview is ask for other contacts. People who take these meetings, and I know it could be awkward the first couple of times you do it, but people who take these meetings expect you to do all of these things.

  They expect you to ask for help and advice but also for introductions to others. If at the end of the conversation, you’d walk away sharing your story, introducing yourself, getting insights into your field, and who might be hiring and who might not, and two or three recommendations for other people you’ve contacted, that’s a successful meeting. It’s a terrific way to build your network and get insights into the sector that you want to work in.

Angela Copeland:

That’s a really great advice, specifically on informational interviews. It’s interesting, I was talking to someone also earlier this week and I was encouraging them to reach out and ask for informational interviews. Their feedback to me was, I’m really not comfortable, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be bothering them. I didn’t really mention it in the introduction that you yourself, Mac, have an incredibly impressive resume and background, both academically and professionally.

  If I were going to reach out to you, I might be thinking the same thing. Like, wow, I don’t know if this person will have time for me, I’m not really sure, I’m asking for something and I’m maybe not providing value and return. Like, all those kinds of thoughts are going around. What would you say to us if we’re thinking about pursuing informational interviews but we’re feeling little uncertain if we might bother the person?

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. First of all, I think that’s a very normal reaction and I think it’s also a reflection of the fact, Angela, that we’re not taught in high school or college how to look for work or how manage our careers. We learn this by trial and error or maybe we’re lucky enough to have a mentor or maybe we work with career coaches, but it’s a skill that we pick up along the way. Like any skill, whether it’s riding a bike or playing the cello or speaking French, you can master it, you can learn it, it just takes practice and study.

  I would say, yes, that’s a natural reaction, and then so your challenge then is you’ve got to learn how to do a successful informational interview. Then there are lots of great books about this out there. We have a chapter about it in our book, but I know you’ve got many blog posts about it on your site. It’s like any meeting, you can learn how to do it and do it well. I would encourage that person first to brush up on their informational interviewing skills with some reading. Second, I would say about reaching out to people who you think might not have time for you. The worst thing that’s going to happen is they will say no.

  My experience has been if you’re specific about what you want, both my own career, but I see this with others as well, the jobseekers that I talked with, if you say, okay, I’d like to have 20 to 30 minutes of your time. I’d like to get your … I’m doing a job search, I’m exploring opportunities in this sector. I’d like to talk to you because … Pardon me. I’d like to get your advice about opportunities in the field. Particularly, I see that you made the switch from this sector to that sector, I’d like to talk to you about that, as well as perhaps get your suggestions about others I might reach out to. If you make a specific request like that, it’s easy for people to say yes.

  They know exactly what you want. If you ask for coffee or pick your brain, you decrease the chances of getting a yes, because it’s not clear to the reader exactly what that might involve. Is this an hour-long conversation? Do I have to go to a coffee shop? What exactly would this person like me to do to help them? Be clear about what you want, come to the person’s office. You can have a conversation like this in 20 minutes. I think if you ask for 20 minutes, you’ll get it. Also, if you’re sending out a request, another way to make it easy for people to say yes is to be clear and say, I’m available on these days, at this time. Then it just becomes a question of scheduling.

Angela Copeland:

I think that’s great.

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. I would also say about … Aim high. Don’t ask for someone’s help because they’ve got a fancy title, but ask because there’s a specific thing or problem they can help you address, be clear about what the problem is. I can personally count on one hand the number of people in my job searches who have said no to me. I’ve done informational interviews with some very senior people in politics and government, and in the nonprofit world, in Oregon and Massachusetts and across the US. I got those meetings not because I had a fancy degree, but because I was clear about what I wanted, and how the person could help me.

Angela Copeland:

That’s a …

Mac Prichard:

I’d like to … Go ahead, Angela.

Angela Copeland:

I’m sorry. I think you made a really good point there, which is it sounds like you’ve been on both sides of the informational interview. You’ve both had people reaching out to you, but you’ve also been the person who has reached out.

Mac Prichard:

I have. I’ve had some great jobs in my career. Some of them I found out about because they were posted publicly and some them I found out about through word of mouth. The most interesting jobs I’ve had were those that were never advertised. Actually, it was 25 years ago this summer, I moved to Oregon from Boston. My first job out here, my goal was to find a position in political communications working at it for an elected official or on a campaign. I found a job as communications director for a candidate for mayor in Portland, Oregon, who is also on the city council.

  It was the third most expensive campaign in the state that year. It was a great job, a great introduction to the state and its people and its politics. That job was never advertised. I found it because I had dozens of conversations and meetings like using the principles I just described over the course of seven months. When I got here and I did that from another state across the country … I did make a couple of job hunting trips out here, but a lot that was done by phone and old-fashioned US mail because this was pre-internet, but using informational interview was central to my success in getting that job.

Angela Copeland:

That’s great. Did you move before you had the job?

Mac Prichard:

I didn’t, Angela. My wife and I, Kris, we had an agreement, first, I had to get a job.

Angela Copeland:

Okay.

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. It was a fair agreement. I would say that’s a key question to ask yourself when you think about moving to a new city. Do you want to move there without a job or do you want to get a job in advance? Or, increasingly, the world’s changed so much, you can often move to a new place and take a job with you and work virtually or perhaps get a contract with your current employer and work part-time.

Angela Copeland:

I know. I think that’s a great idea. I think oftentimes, people are surprised to know that’s even an option. They may have just never really thought about asking their boss if they could take their job with them and move. It’s interesting because you have this experience going from one coast to the other. What tips for us … I mean, it sounds like informational interviews would be at the top of your list about trying to move to another city when we don’t have a lot of contacts. What other sort of tips would you give us if we’re looking to move and we’re not really quite sure where to begin?

Mac Prichard:

I think about a fellow I met a few months ago or actually, it’s a year ago now, and he came to me for an informational interview because of his interest in working in Portland. At that time, he was in Ohio. He was in his early 40s, he’d had a career in banking, doing marketing and communications. He wanted to do communications for a non-profit in Oregon. I was so impressed because when he sought me out, he had very clear questions about the non-profit communications world here and he had a clear goal. He also was committed to … It took him, I think, seven or eight months of having conversations like the one he and I had.

  He, I think, made two trips out, but in the end, he did get a … He became marketing director for a very large non-profit here in Portland. He did all the right things. He had a clear goal, he kept his eye on job boards, but he also identified who the major employers were in the world he wanted to work in, he connected with people who knew the marketing and communications sector in Oregon’s nonprofit world. When he rattled off the names of people he’d met with and had similar conversations, I knew he was connecting with all the right people.

  The job he did get was advertised, but he had connected with people inside that organization before it went up. He was a known factor to them. When he came out here, he knew it was a good position because he’d done his homework. He talked to the leaders in the non-profit communications sector in Oregon and he knew who the players were, what those jobs paid, and where are the interesting opportunities were, and he landed in one. I think those are principles and practices that could serve anyone, whether they’re moving from Ohio to Oregon or to any state.

Angela Copeland:

Yeah. Absolutely. I love the idea of identifying the employer first and starting to make those connections, so that you’re a known person when something does come available. I think that’s an incredibly effective way to go about it. I will say, in talking with jobseekers, one thing I often find is that they get very, very frustrated, especially as they become more senior in their career because it seems like it takes forever to find just the right job. I mean, what advice do you have for us regarding timeline? Like, how long should it really take us to find a job?

Mac Prichard:

It varies. You see estimates out there for six to 12 months as you get more senior in your career. There’s another number out there that I think is just as relevant. It’s this, the federal government says all of us on average would change jobs every four years. I would say to people, wherever you are in your career, but especially if you’re perhaps in your 40s or 50s, change is going to happen. It may come because of your choice or it may be involuntary, but we all need to prepare for that. We need to take action now and keep our professional networks vibrant and get out there and make connections and build relationships and help others before we need to go out and ask others to help us.

Angela Copeland:

I totally agree. I mean, I think oftentimes, I’ll talk to someone that will say, my goal is to get a job that I can work at for 20 years and I can retire. Occasionally, I do hear that. Although it’s a great goal, in today’s job market, it may or may not happen that way. I tend to think, if you’re not out there networking and kind of keeping up your contacts and your skills and those kinds of things that make you marketable, you’re putting yourself a little bit at risk, that something could happen and you could end up out of work for some period of time.

Mac Prichard:

You can. I personally have been through three periods of unemployment. Two of them are quite long. I cashed my last unemployment check twice.

Angela Copeland:

Wow.

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. I’d had some great jobs before those things happened and had done some impressive things. Credentials alone aren’t going to get you your next job. They help and they might even get you through the door and get you an interview, but if you’re going to close the deal, you need to be clear about your goals, you need to have relationships and keep your skills up to date. I’ve certainly learned that lesson personally. I see the people who are most successful in their job search and their careers know those lessons as well.

Angela Copeland:

I think another important kind of note with what you just mentioned is that there’s sometimes things that can happen that can cause you to be unemployed that are not a reflection on how talented that you are or how much you bring to offer. It can be a really emotionally difficult process when someone is out of work. I think, oftentimes, we assume it’s like a reflection on us. Sometimes, it just happens and you have to sort of pick yourself back up and remember that you still do have a lot to offer and try to go at it again.

Mac Prichard:

You’re absolutely right. It’s hard to be let go, particularly, when it’s through no fault of your own. It’s hard to tell your family and your friends that and it’s hard to get through that process of loss. It’s a kick in the teeth. You have to recognize that, acknowledge it, and then ultimately, move on. It’s challenging.

Angela Copeland:

Yeah. As a side note, I was kind of thinking, I often talk to jobseekers that are considering quitting their jobs because they are really sick of where they’re at. They’re thinking, hey, I could just focus all my energy on it, searching for a new job. The thing, I think, sometimes isn’t really thought about is, first, the fact that it could take you a very long time to identify just the right job.

  The second is, sometimes when you quit, your future employer, it may be confusing on your resume. It may look like something happened where maybe it looks like you were fired when in reality, you did quit. I don’t know. If you have any thoughts about sort of whether or not to quit your jobs or when is the right time to do that. I generally try to encourage people unless they’re in a really unhealthy situation to try to hold out until they find something new.

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. It’s a personal choice. There’s data out there that shows employers prefer candidates who are employed versus people who had been out of work, especially for people who have been out of work for three or more months, don’t do as well. It has nothing to do with their abilities or skills … I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s a fact. I think that if you’re ready to make a change, start investing time in making that change. It’s best if you can look from a job, so that you don’t have to overcome skepticism that employers have about hiring unemployed people.

  Again, I’m not saying that’s right, it’s a fact. Obviously, if it’s affecting your health, then maybe it’s not a good place to be. Maybe it does make sense to quit, but that’s a very personal choice and it really depends on individual circumstances. I will say, early in my career, in my 20s, I was in a job that I left and I didn’t have anything lined up, I just didn’t know any better, Angela, I thought, it will be easy to find the next job, and it took me seven months.

  I think part of it was that I wasn’t employed, but part of it was that I wasn’t clear about my goals. Once I did get clear about my goals and I did start doing informational interviews and I had no idea how to do that, but I met a career counselor at a local university who gave me some great advice. Once I started having those conversations, in about two months, because I knew what I wanted, I uncovered a great job. It was never advertised. I became a spokesman for Boston’s Big Dig.

Angela Copeland:

That’s great.

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. At that time, it was the largest public works project in America, and I was all of 26.

Angela Copeland:

Wow.

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. I found that job through networking and I found that job because I got a clear about what I wanted to do. That’s one of the big reasons why I’m so passionate about this. Because I’ve struggled with unemployment myself, and there are ways that you can get through it a lot quicker. Again, learning these skills can help you. Ultimately, our work needs to have meaning and purpose, and that’s what this is all about, helping people find work that can bring them pleasure and joy and meaning.

Angela Copeland:

I know. Absolutely. I often think that one of the reasons that we’re sometimes frustrated about how long it takes to get a job is that when we first start our career, say right after college, I think at least most people were fairly open to a wide range of jobs. Like, there are lot of things we could do, we’re not really sure what we want to do. Our cost of living is still pretty low. Maybe we’re very mobile and we could live in any city. Like, we’re very flexible on a lot of requirements.

  By the time we’ve had our second or third job and say we’re in our 30s or we’re in our 40s, suddenly, maybe we own a house and we have a family, and we need to be in a specific city, and maybe our cost of living has gone up so we need to make a specific amount of money and we need to be in a certain field. That’s kind of my theory, as I think the further we go in our career, sometimes, the more specific we get, which is great, but it also takes longer to find something that specific than when we’re straight out of college and we’re just open to the whole world.

Mac Prichard:

Sure. I think those are all great points and spot on.

Angela Copeland:

Yeah. I had a chance in July when I met you at Podcast Movement to meet a couple of your team members and we recently reconnected, Jenna and Ben, which are great. I know they really help you there at Mac’s List. I’m curious just if you would share with us when you’ve been hiring at Mac’s List or at previous places that you’ve worked, what are some of the things that you look for in a new future employee?

Mac Prichard:

Values are important. Throughout my career, personally, I’ve always tried to make a difference on issues I care about or in the community where I live and work. I look for people who carry a passion for service to others and a commitment to helping the community. Technical skills matter, but having a track record of learning new skills is even more important. I used to be whiz at MultiMate.

Angela Copeland:

At what?

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. You don’t even remember it. Before there was MS Word, there was something called MultiMate or WordStar, all these word processing programs from the ‘80s.

Angela Copeland:

Okay.

Mac Prichard:

People would actually put this on their resume. My point in bringing that up is your technical skills can get out of date pretty quickly. It’s having a demonstrated record of being able to learn new skills, I think it’s important. Then the culture fit matters. Again, this is where values matter. We do advertise on our job board, obviously, but we also spend a lot of time when we’re hiring, reaching out to former employees and interns and partners, contributors to our blog, people who know us and know our values, and their recommendations carry a lot weight in the hiring process.

Angela Copeland:

It sounds like you kind of hire a little bit in the hidden job market as well, because you’re kind of looking for those known people.

Mac Prichard:

Yeah. We do both.

Angela Copeland:

Yeah.

Mac Prichard:

I think the best employers do both. Everybody … every hiring manager, even if a job is posted, will often send a resume to a few or … I’m sorry, the job posting to a few colleagues. We’ll all get those emails. Often, we’re in the BCC line, and it says, hey, I’m looking for a new person to help us here on the team, please send the good people my way. We do that as well.

Angela Copeland:

That’s great. Also, if we want to learn more about Mac’s List or we want to check out your podcast, Find Your Dream Job, or we want to get your book, where should we go?

Mac Prichard:

Visit MacsList.org and in the nav bar there, you’ll find tabs for the podcast, the book, our blog, and we also have a course that launches on November 1st called Hack the Hidden Job Market, and there’s a tab for that as well. You can find the show Find Your Dream Job on iTunes and Stitcher as well.

Angela Copeland:

That’s great. Mac, thank you so much for joining me and for all your great advice.

Mac Prichard:

Thank you for having me on the show, Angela.