Getting Hired in the AI Era: Stand Out, Signal Judgment, Land the Role

Summary

Isaac led a discussion on three key areas: standing out, signaling judgment, and landing the role, with data showing 82% of employees use AI to review resumes and recruiters only spend under eight seconds per resume on first pass. Panelists including John, Derek, Joanne, Heather, and Joe shared insights on how candidates can differentiate themselves, with recommendations to showcase evidence of AI expertise through GitHub repositories, case studies, and business outcomes rather than just listing skills. Joanne discussed the importance of adaptability for C-level positions, emphasizing the need to demonstrate critical thinking skills and the ability to translate diverse experience into specific company contexts. oe, who leads the Member in Transition program at the Society of Information Management, shared his insights on standing out in job searches, highlighting the importance of self-assessment, understanding the opportunity, and leveraging networking to gain an edge. Derek and Elizabeth suggested focusing on demonstrating problem-solving skills and thinking abilities rather than just answering questions, while Martin and Joseph stressed the critical importance of cultural fit over technical qualifications.

Speakers

• Host – Isaac Sacolick
• Digital Trailblazers – Derrick Butts, Martin Davis, Joanne Friedman, John Patrick Luethe, Liz Martinez, Heather May, Joseph Puglisi

Discussion

1. Stand out: What’s the one signal that gets a candidate noticed now – with ATS, recruiters, and hiring leaders – that job hunters, casual lookers, and those preparing for their next role should zero-in on?
2. Signal judgment: Pick a skill: (i) What does a qualified result look like on a resume, and (ii) how does someone signal mastery if they’ve learned it but haven’t done it on the job?
3. Land the role: What differentiates finishing 2nd/3rd vs. winning the role? What advice do you have for job seekers who fall short in the final interview?

Research

Sources

Dashboard

Transcript

[00:00:02] Isaac Sacolick: Greetings everyone. Welcome to this week’s Coffee with Digital Trailblazer. September 25th, our 189th episode. I don’t remember the exact day. We started it in September, October, four years ago, but here we are back going into our fifth year of programming for digital and AI transformation leaders and it’s just been a fun ride. I’m glad you’re here for this episode. And and do remember, if you ever miss an episode or have to cut out early for any reason, you can visit drive starcio.com Coffee all our previous episodes are there.

There’s a button there to add the link to your calendar and you can sign up for my newsletter there, which is coming out in next I think it’s next week. It’ll be coming out. So lots and lots of fun stuff. This week we are speaking to all those of you about getting hired in the air.

And that’s not just for all of you looking for jobs. It’s all of you in the early stages, recognizing that at some point you need to be ready to look for a job. And the rules have changed dramatically over the last few years. We’re going to talk about standing out, which means how to make sure that you, your resume, your brand, everything about you stands out above the rest. When you start networking or you start applying for jobs, making sure that you are getting your foot in the door and having a chance at being interviewed. Signaling judgment is going to be talking about how to showcase your expertise and how to showcase expertise when you’ve just learned a new skill but maybe not have any direct experience with it or and then landing the role is probably our most important area.

Landing the role we’ll talk about. For those of you who felt you’ve been number two or number three in an interview cycle four, five, six times in your career, how do you actually get past that and land the role? And we’ll be covering some examples around that we’re going to be covering. For those of you looking for C level for VP director for individual contributors. So I’ve asked my panelists today, my speakers, my experts, to be able to really speak to a specific group when they’re answering their questions, do say hello in the comments screen. Hi Wayne. Hi Rick. It’s great to see you here this week.

I do have a very packed in research slide. You can find this slide@drive.starcio.com Coffee and you can get to all the references there on the left side. Some data around standing out that I went back and looked at in detail.

82% of our employees are using AI to review resumes.

I did not know this acronym, but if you are not using the tools to make sure that your resume goes through those filters, you have some work cut out for you. Recruiters are only spending under 8 seconds per resume on the first pass. That means your resume needs to be clean and easy to find something of interest to them.

Resumes that include the exact job title received 10.6 times more interview invitations and 76.4% of recruiters start their candidate filtering by skills, not by work history, not by education.

These are not. These are concerning numbers to me. I mean, you know, first is being the work to be able to tailor your resume for every job. It’s very painful.

And then overloading skills is not a good idea. We’ll see that in the next statement.

Include a qualified result in 70% of experience bolts. I do have a question around that. So if you say that you are an AI expert, you better be able to come back and say what that actually means from a business outcome result and what you’ve accomplished personally. So we’ll be talking about that. Signaling judgment. 80% of hiring managers, their resumes don’t match their real world skills at least sometimes. 34% say it happens. 22% of job seekers say they list skills they don’t have.

I think you need to be expansive with the skills that you have. I don’t think you should be shy about them.

Don’t embellish and be able to, if you show up at an interview, be able to answer questions about it. 88% of organizations now consider problem solving the most critical skill. 70% say critical thinking. 98% requires strong communication skills. We have covered this in other episodes of Coffee with digital trailblazers. I’m giving you some data points here. This is coming from Next one. Staffing some data points here. Just echoing what Joe and Joanne and many of us have been saying for Heather for many long time. Better be focusing on these three areas and then in terms of landing the role.

Expect to have several conversations. There’ll probably be two to four candidates in the final round. There’s probably two weeks to make a decision. So just bounding you in reality and the biggest mistake coined here. This is again from it looks like an AI website, but I don’t know. But generic answers about leadership, answering repeat questions, not preparing for a compensation conversation. These are just some of the issues they call out in their article about what not to do during a final set of interviews. On the right hand side, I’m not going to go through this. You can find this chart, this whole slide, all the references@drive.star cio.com and you could just see some data points around three different levels of roles in IT and AI, data security and Marketing. The primary roles we’ll be talking about here today and just giving you a sense of some things that are saying as a CIO better be an architect of agility and AI and data better be able to talk about applying AI and about the operational sides of AI, not just the data science around it.

Chief AI Officer now at 76% of large organizations, that’s crazy to me. We are going to revisit this topic again. I think we talked about it a little earlier this year again under Security Security Architects and AI Security the number one role there and CMO roles have been rewritten to Revenue Officer. That’s a really interesting subject. And if you’re in Marketer or a CM and want to talk about this, I’m hoping to have an episode specific on CMO CIO again and maybe we’ll cover this. I’m going to shorten this. Leave it up here. For those of you who have joined late again, you can visit drive.starcio.com to get this slide and all the links to it.

This dashboard will also be up there. And folks, let’s see who gets to the hand raising first.

We’re going to be talking first about standing out.

What’s the one signal that gets a candidate noticed? Now with the AIs doing parsing with recruiters and hiring leaders. So we’re not just talking about AI, we’re talking about how do you stand out with AI? How do you stand out with recruiters? How do you stand out with the hiring leaders? I want to talk about this from different perspectives. Those of you looking for jobs, those of you casual looking, some of you preparing for your next role. And then let’s also talk about from the perspective of how contributors, VP directors and C levels should engage their programs to stand out. Thank you folks on the comments.

Love seeing all this. Hello John from London. I’ll contribute there in just a second. John has his first hand raise twice in two weeks. John, what do you want to talk about? Standing out?

[00:08:16] Martin Davis: Yeah.

[00:08:16] John Patrick Luethe: Isaac, thank you.

So great to have so many shows. Well, what I really see is I work with college students a lot, a lot of MBA students, people in the analytics department and almost all the students. Their resumes are so similar. You look across everyone in the program and it’s hard from a background to differentiate one from another. So for the hiring managers in companies, it’s really hard because all these students look almost exactly the same.

I really tell people that they have to find some way to really stand out.

And with AI they have to be doing projects. They have to be looking at the newest stuff coming out with AI and they have to be doing projects. They have to have GitHub repos where they basically are putting their projects in. So when people can ask about it, they can show a portfolio of projects where they’ve used the latest technology so that they understand it and they know how to apply it. And so for example, they should show me where in their GitHub repo they’ve used Jev over the last weekend to classify stuff.

That’s what I tell everyone. If you’re going to do stuff, let’s get so you have hands on on the newest stuff.

[00:09:23] Isaac Sacolick: I love that idea of the, and we’ve talked about this before, the idea of a portfolio and GitHub if you’re a developer, if you’re a data vis specialist, I know Tableau, for example, has a tableau public that you can showcase out Soul Search and do your work where you can actually showcase it. You don’t necessarily have to be an expert on LinkedIn or a blog, but you do need some evidence of your expertise and find ways to expose that. Hey Derek, how’s it going?

[00:09:53] John Patrick Luethe: Derek, good morning. I agree with John. It was things that stand up for me is, you know, show me evidence where you can solve a problem, use an artificial intelligence application. Just don’t tell me you can perform the job. And what I’m going to ask you is where have you made an impact based on using these tools? So I would say identify a gap in like an AI governance, a third party risk, and translate those into a business exposure or challenge that they’ve had. And tell me how you remediated that strategy. I want you to walk me through the process. This tells me two things. One, they understand the technology, they understand how to utilize that artificial intelligence tool. But now they’ve gone through the thought process and it tells me how mature they are in understanding the complications or the nuances of that specific program.

[00:10:34] Isaac Sacolick: Hey, Derek, Derek, we could. Let’s go deeper a little bit. Let’s say you’re in the SoC, you’ve got one or two years of experience doing that, you’re tired of the late shifts, you’ve gotten a few of the alphabets, suitable credentials and certifications that you can get. Give me an example of somebody who’s worked in the soc and what they can use to demonstrate and stand out.

[00:10:57] John Patrick Luethe: So show me where you’ve used the tool to generate an AI agent to look at anomalies or threats coming into your SoC. So for example, you’ve got geofencing that takes place. Identify where these threats are coming from, tell me what countries, tell me what specific cities and if they’re consistent. Give me metrics on the things that you’re seeing based on DDoS types, attacks. Where are they coming from? Are they actually real people or are they bots? Use the tools to help generate the information you want without having to manually go through it yourself. And this is going to help me from a SOC perspective because now I can have multiple agents run it at the same time within the sock. It’s going to give me visibility into things that that one single person cannot physically manage and then actually highlight those things are considered threats based on the risk associated with the business that I’m working with or the application of service that I’m working with. And this now is going to tell me again your maturity level and working through this and understanding how well or how deep you can actually manipulate the tools to work for you. It’s given the biggest bang for the bucket. Also tell me your understanding and the complications of some of these tools because either you use a vibe coding, no coding, or you’re actually developer. I want to know what type of experience you have to be able to get to this level of complexity because I’m hiring you for your skills to help make my job easier. But I also want to make sure you understand exactly what you’re doing before putting you in this. You know, too many times I see organizations hiring the wrong people because they’re not actually asking for testing, asking for resources, or show me where you’ve done this before and actually walk through it. And having that done after the fact is a non starter for me and too many. A lot of people I’ve interviewed along the lines they have credentials. Show me where you view the credentials based on the applications of things you’re trying to do, where your credentials have helped you actually make that work. I’m going to do the same thing when it comes to AI. Tell me where you use either. Claude Chatgpt OpenAI it doesn’t matter if you’re an expert in this or say you are, show me to what extent you actually can produce this.

[00:12:53] Isaac Sacolick: Thank you Derek. Let’s go to Joanne. Jon, you speaking to contributors, VP directors or C levels today?

[00:13:00] Joanne Friedman: Sea levels.

[00:13:01] Isaac Sacolick: Okay, to sea levels, sea levels for 500.

[00:13:06] Joanne Friedman: Actually it’s a thousand because they’re more expensive.

I would say, especially the chief AI officer, or if that’s where you’re looking to go, I would say it’s adaptability backed by evidence.

So to everything that Derek and others have just said, yes, you need the evidence. But what you need more is the adaptability.

And that needs to cascade through not only the resume. For the ats, yes, you have to have all the terms and the rule defined and whatever, but that’s kind of mechanics. What you really need to show is your critical thinking skills, how you apply what you’ve learned and produce results when the circumstances change. Because we all live with ambiguity.

And ambiguity tends to be one of those words that comes up in job postings more often than not, and particularly as well. And Heather may agree or disagree with this. With executive recruiters, you have to be able to think fast on your feet. But mostly what your job is is to translate your diverse experience into the context of the company that you’re going to be interviewed by.

And they don’t always have the same problem as what is in the job posting or what somebody else has in the same industry.

So that level of flexibility is really being able to translate a broad base of experience. And usually it’s people with, let’s say, 15, 20 years or more experience.

You’ve done the same problem set over and over again in different contexts. The ability to translate that as evidence is not so easy because the vernaculars are different, because you know, circumstances change. It’s not enough to say you untangled a production bottleneck or improved a customer handoff or something like that. They’re different achievements, but each one different demonstrates that you have an ability to diagnose a set of problems or work through constraints, make something better. Don’t be afraid to to use the word political in your environments, because that’s a skill unto itself, how to navigate that and go for the most amount of adaptability that you can. As you’re talking through the different experiences that you’ve had, you know, you can start to show a pattern of how you think, how you solve problems, what the results are, and what matters most in each company that you’ve shown this skill to, meaning your experience.

[00:15:49] Isaac Sacolick: So Joanne, maybe go one level deeper when you so my issue with adaptability is when you speak to CIOs who have built their playbook up, and I’m guilty of that for sure.

And so you know, the risk is you bring them into Round Peg Square hold to the wrong person for the job. Right. And so what you’re saying is, when I look over this person’s resume, because you want to, you know, this is standing out as, you know, for CIOs, you know, is essentially who they know, what recruiters are using, what the resume looks like, what evidence is out there around this person. So it’s anything that a, you know, recruiting manager is going to say, let’s put this in front of the committee, this person in front of the committee. How is adaptability shown

[00:16:38] Joanne Friedman: by relating more than one.

When you answer a question, use more than one example.

So in this scenario, in this situation, this is how I solved the problem. This is what the outcome was in tangible terms, evidence backed, etc. Now if we take the same sort of problem and put it in this environment, which could be a completely different industry, you know, the parameters changed, there was more ambiguity, there was more politicization in the boardroom, etc. Etc.

This is how I am able to adapt what is my playbook to a new situation. Because criteria constantly change and ambiguity is.

[00:17:26] Isaac Sacolick: Sorry I cut you off there, Joanne. Joanne, I think that’s a good answer for showing adoption during the interview process.

We actually practiced that last week, right, Joanne? It’s like, don’t give me. It depends.

Of course it depends.

But you know, walk through the scenario and for those of you missed it. Last week we talked About Tech Budget 2027 and I asked our speakers not to say your priority on investment.

It depends because it obviously does. And so everybody here had to craft different scenarios and that’s what you need to do on an interview. Of course, in an interview you can do your homework and probably narrow down the scenarios that they’re looking at and be able to carry information forward from one interview to the next. I’ll let you finish, Joanne.

[00:18:14] Joanne Friedman: Yeah, thank you.

The reason I say two examples is because you can relate a problem that they don’t show that they have or that you haven’t heard as how you can solve it as value add because it may be a problem that comes up six months later.

So the idea is to show various situations, critical thinking skills, how you can adapt from one environment to another and that becomes value add for you as a leader.

In other words, I’m not so entrenched in my own playbook that I can’t bring in new information, new criteria, and solve problems just as well.

So it goes to the percentage of wins that you can put on a scoreboard as a leader.

[00:19:01] Isaac Sacolick: Perfect, Joanne. Thanks. Let’s go to Heather Heather if you guys do not know listening Heather is an executive recruiter, the CEO of May Executive Search. She’s the one to know.

Heather talking about standing out, how do you stand out?

[00:19:17] Heather May: There’s so many things that have already been said that are absolutely correct. I think John said a statement. Being able to say that all these resumes look the same, how you differentiate yourself is really what’s going to make the difference. And I’ll talk about what that means in a second. But as a contributor, somebody that is just entering the market or changing jobs, if you negate the prep work, the human element, your soft skills in how you tell a story, in how you communicate, how you listen in an interview, then you’re going to miss the boat regardless of what skills you have.

So you have to have two sides of your brain working at the same time so that you are able to not only demonstrate what you’ve done. And that could be either, if you haven’t officially done it, maybe through a hackathon or an apprentice, a shadowing role, writing a case study, taking certifications. Any of these things will demonstrate that you’ve can back up what you know from a technical standpoint. But if you can’t communicate it in words, then you’re going to be in trouble. From a quantitative or metric standpoint. The resume has to have dollars, percents, numbers, anything that’s going to quantify what it is that you’ve done and what you’ve accomplished and be able to tell a story about it. In the comments stream, Martin mentioned about Star Absolutely. If you have trouble telling a story, staying on track, that’s a great way to get your thoughts organized.

We can put that in the list if you want.

Isaac but you have to be able to communicate.

Joe I know is going to pick up on this going afterwards the next speaker but there’s also an element of training your hiring managers.

They may not be good interviewers. They may think that they know what they want or if it’s the internal recruiting team or someone that’s not in the business unit or the actual manager of the person they’re interviewing. They have to be trained on the kinds of questions to ask, what to look for. And not just do you ask a question and they say yes or no, how do you query them, how do you get them, draw them out, how do you make them feel comfortable?

And all those elements are not unique to AI, but they are endemic and systemic in the interview process. And the last thing that I do for my candidates and the way that I present to my clients I like to get the resume of the way someone looks right now, not after they put it through AI with the job description and have an exact match because that doesn’t help because the AI is going to be using to evaluate it. So now AI is talking to AI and the actual document and the person is no longer authentically them. So to me that doesn’t work. I want to see the resume now and then I want to see an alignment doc after they get the job description. What are those elements on the job description that really you can speak to that you can really highlight and nail in the interview? Write that up and then I can share that when I present you to the hiring manager so they know what to expect. This is a person that really does have the skill and, and has the knowledge that I’m looking for

[00:22:39] Isaac Sacolick: to unpack there. Heather, how many people do you look at to fill a role? Just give a sense of what the competition looks like today.

[00:22:49] Heather May: Oh wow.

I have looked at one or two and then I’ve looked at over 300 so it all too often unfortunately I just found out today with a position I’m trying to fill, what they’re really looking for is why didn’t you tell me that 299 people ago?

And sometimes interview companies don’t know what they’re looking for until they start meeting people.

And I don’t want to use a four letter expression. It does depend on.

[00:23:26] Isaac Sacolick: So let me reverse the question a little bit. You’re looking through those 300 resumes, needle and haystack. You’re going to pick however many four to seven.

Tell me something you would see in a resume that signals hey, I really should reach out to this person. They may not be right for this role but I need to go get to know this person.

[00:23:46] Heather May: The way they communicate on the language they use in their resume, on their profile and then in their resume and then also the communication that they have with me. Because my process is I understand the job specs, I create a methodology and a research approach and then I will work with my research team to say I want people that look like this. I look at profiles and I say more like that person, that person. No, that doesn’t work. And I build a proforma of a person that I’m looking for and then when we send a connect message, how they respond back. You know they don’t have someone this week just said to me, you know, hi Ms. May, I would like to speak with you if that position is still open. Well maybe that’s very formal, but that was different. Yeah, I’m interested. Or okay. Like, okay what? You know, already you’ve set me back and saying, why should I talk to you? There’s nothing about you that is unique. And once I have that interview, if they smile, if they laugh, if they have a personality, if they ask me questions that say that they really prepped and looked into this company and identify some of those problems, and that’s the kind of stuff that I’m going to prep them when they go for the interview. That’s the stuff you talk about. You don’t need a laundry list of what you do, you know. Yes, you need your skills, your highlight skills. But I did this and I did this and I managed that and I developed that. It’s too much, you know, Tell me what you accomplished. Tell me what you’ve changed, you know, what impact you’ve made.

And those are the people that I want to talk to.

[00:25:22] Isaac Sacolick: Excellent. I’m going to answer my own question before we go to Joe. I’m looking for someone I think I can learn something from.

That means you’re doing more than just giving me a quantified bullet. It means you’re telling me a little bit of how you got there and what you did, not what the team did, not what the company did, but what your role is. And it’s got to be something that I’m going to have a conversation around. Say this person’s something I can learn from. And it’s got to show me some form of velocity. Right. I move pretty fast. I have 30 windows open at any time.

Liz is going to speak for a few. She’s seen me work. I need somebody who demonstrates velocity in their resume. That doesn’t mean job hunting at all. That just means the ability to be adaptive and a quick learner and take on a lot of diverse responsibility. So there’s my two.

Bring Joe up. For those of you who don’t know Joe, he has how long? He’ll say he’s. He leads the member in transition program at the Society of Information Management.

He leads the Fairfield Westchester Chapter. Right now, we’re about to have our yearly events, a few of those in the Northeast. If you want to see Joe and me in person, come to our yearly events. October 15th, right, Joe?

[00:26:38] Joe Puglisi: Yes, October 15th at the Rock Ribbon Country Club.

[00:26:43] Isaac Sacolick: Beautiful, beautiful place. Great group of people.

Really smart lineup that the team there has put together. And Joe, how many years have you been working in member in transition?

[00:26:55] Joe Puglisi: It’s more than 15.

[00:26:56] Joanne Friedman: So.

[00:26:57] Isaac Sacolick: So he. If you are stuck.

Okay. Especially in that last category. If you’re looking for C level roles and you cannot land the role, he is the person to talk to.

Joe, let’s talk first. Talk about standing out.

[00:27:12] Joe Puglisi: So, so many things have been said.

I was chomping at the, at the bit here to jump in.

Heather was spot on about communications, of course, my bailiwick. Right. One really needs to be able to tell a story and tell it in a compelling way, factual, emotional, enthusiasm. We always talk about enthusiasm. You know, if you’re a Debbie Downer, you’re not going to get far. So I want to talk about very fundamental things. Isaac, more so for this, more senior levels, but I think they’re applicable across the board.

My first advice to, to someone who is seeking a job is do your homework.

You really need to know yourself.

Take the time to really look at who you are and what you feel you can accomplish.

What is your strength? And you know, we talk about standing out. Well, what makes you different from the next five guys who have been through the same courses, who have played with the same IT engines, who played with the same programming languages, who have been, you know, in, in a role, similar role before. What makes you different? What’s the standout? What’s your unique value, your prop? And you have to be able to, as Heather said, you know, articulate that. How do you describe your personal brand? We spend so much time on the weekly calls talking about branding, being able to convey your brand.

It’s essential.

The second part of your homework is know the opportunity you’re chasing.

Figure out what it is that they’re really looking for.

You know, AI makes it so easy to get pages of information about any company and you can even ask AI to tell you about what business problems they may be facing. You don’t have to go read the 10k anymore.

It’ll hand it to you in a silver platter. Take advantage of that. Know what they’re looking for, know what the problems are. And now make an honest assessment. Don’t hit the click to apply button, please. Do not just chase every freaking opportunity out there.

Look at the opportunity and say, hey, do I really fit? And if the answer is yes, my secret sauce is just what’s going to solve their problem.

Then make the application, then write that killer cover letter. Then reach out to your network. Hopefully you have one. And if you don’t, you need to start building one.

Find somebody who’s at that company or someone who knows somebody at that company and get some intel, hopefully get some inside Dope, maybe even get someone to walk your resume in.

Heather said she looks at one or two or maybe 300 in some cases.

I think if you’re not in the first 40 or 50 resumes that go in through the stack, you’re probably not even getting looked at in most, in most cases today.

So getting that inside referral is the brass ring.

Isaac, I’m sorry, I could, I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there.

[00:30:22] Isaac Sacolick: Joe, I’m calling you for first. When we get to land the role, let’s go to Martin and Liz. I’ll take my break and then we’re going to get into signal link judgment. That’s going to be a rapid round.

So get your answers ready. Go ahead.

Who’s next? Martin, welcome back.

[00:30:36] Martin Davis: I was just gonna say Joe’s been. Joe and the others have been stealing

[00:30:39] Isaac Sacolick: all the good ones.

[00:30:41] Martin Davis: So I think the, this whole thing around.

Yeah. Standing out is.

I think we mentioned authentic. I think we mentioned what you are good at. Your, your branding, who are you, why they should care about who you are, how that fits with what they need. Yeah, it’s. It’s making. Yeah. Sure that you are being very clear on that you’re being really clear on the business outcomes you have been accountable for. Yeah.

[00:31:18] Isaac Sacolick: You’ve got to really. Yeah.

[00:31:20] Martin Davis: Show where you have made sizable decisions and you have actually created value for other companies and yeah. Picking examples line up with the kind of things they are looking for. You’ve got to make that connection. You got to say, yeah, how do I actually have something they want that I can actually deliver value for them. So.

And yeah, it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking new technology, old technology or whatever else. Yeah. It’d be good to highlight within that how you have applied new technology to help move that other company forward or whatever else. But it’s about making sure that what you have and what you’ve done connects with what they want fundamentally.

[00:32:09] Isaac Sacolick: Thank you, Martin. Let’s go to Liz. Liz, you got the last word on standing out.

[00:32:15] Liz Martinez: Okay, so a few things that you need when you’re evaluating a role.

Be clear about whether it’s requiring hands on AI experience versus governing or measuring or etc.

[00:32:31] Heather May: Right.

[00:32:32] Liz Martinez: Well, those are, those are two very different things.

And they don’t. You don’t have to actually be able to code AI to be able to actually manage it, govern it, identify where it could be leveraged better in a corporation. So I just want to throw that out there. I’ve been working with AI to develop Something called the dream job agent and those SIM calls, a society for information calls that Joe leads are really amazing.

And there I actually spoke with somebody about how to copy create that agent so that it would really speak to not just roles that were good for my skill set, but roles that were good for my temperament, for my need for challenge, for my interest level etc and really can, once I created this agent, I can now evaluate roles against it and it helps me to pivot in the right direction.

[00:33:35] Heather May: And

[00:33:37] Liz Martinez: I wanted to talk a little bit about skills because the skills on LinkedIn are extremely important, way more important than you think because that’s where the recruiters are looking at your skills. And when it comes to adaptability or adaptability, depending how you want to talk about it, doing your homework and actually pre translating your results that you’ve gotten in the past into a result that you could provide to the company that is critical, that not only shows your adaptability or adaptability, but it shows that you’ve actually thought through their problems well enough to know how you can make a difference for them.

[00:34:18] Isaac Sacolick: Thank you, Liz and everybody. Just a signal what we’re going to do next and then I’ll go through my break. We’re going to talk about signaling judgment. We got to do this in rapid fire round.

So you’re going to pick a skill share. What does a qualified result look like on a resume?

Give a sense of what it looks like or should look like if you have that skill and how you demonstrate your value and what value you have delivered. I like this language from Martin. And then second, how does someone who hasn’t, who maybe has mastered the skill but hasn’t done it on the job, what are you going to put in there to showcase your expertise? So we’re going to do a rapid round around that when we come back from our break. Folks, we are on the cusp of October and so here you have on the right hand side of the screen the October lineup.

Next week we’re going to be talking about build, buy or automate, how you’re going to build AI agents going into the next year and talk about the differences between vibing and buying and configuring. We’re going to get into a real nuts and bolts conversation there on the 9th.

I’ve hopefully timed this well so that Martin can join us. It’s two weeks out this year, almost every other week. Change management, why AI adoption skills and how to measure progress. I think this was an idea from Liz.

So we’ll be doing change management on the 9th, 16th we’ll be talking about AI infrastructure debt, strategies for capacity, resiliency and modernization.

This is prep work for a roundtable that I am leading in Houston on October 27th. It’s an executive roundtable. If you want to join us and you’re in Houston, please do reach out to me on LinkedIn and I will get you an invite to that. That’s October 27th in Houston. The 23rd we’ll be talking about finishing strong, how digital leaders close out the year, different things that you do in every season, and we’ll try to give you some suggestions about how to make an impact in the last quarter and October 30th. I’m really excited for this one. This is where Joanne and I are going to debate human augmentation versus Human in the middle versus agentic AI and start splitting up the use cases that make sense for different strategies. That’s going to be the October 30th to visit drive.starcio.com Coffee you can get the Add to Calendar button so it’s on your calendar. You can get the worksheet here. Getting hired in the arrow. All the links are on there.

This dashboard will be on there. And if you ever miss an episode, the links to those episodes are now there. Okay folks, waiting for the first hand to raise on picking a skill. What does it look like on a resume that’s qualified? And how does someone signal mastery if they’ve learned it but haven’t done it on the job? I don’t see any hands raised. This is scary. Oh, there we go. Derek, go.

[00:37:25] John Patrick Luethe: Okay, so mine would be having to do with a skill. Look at AI governance and cyber resilience strategy. How do you assume that? So if I look at the resume, they say have a knowledge of AI governance, they work with nist, they work with these cybersecurity frameworks. Great. Show me where you’ve applied. Show me where you’ve actually taken the principles, identified a business cause, a business data, third party risk associated with AI adoption and translate into defining how you prioritize the recommendations for leadership. That’s what I want to know. So in looking at this skill, I want to say create. Show me the evidence where you’ve done this. I want to say show me where you’ve actually now taken the AI governance. And don’t tell me you just completed a course and got a certificate, but show me how you can now take an application or a use case, use the AI Risk Management Framework and develop AI risk assessment, simplify risk register, use AI Governance policy, adopt an AI governance policy, look at third party risk and vendor assessment and execute executive level risk briefing that shows me transparently transparency to one that you understand what you’re doing, you have independency, as Joanna mentioned, adaptability.

You can actually show me independent AI governance program or project applying a NIST framework to evaluate this. It’s not just the certification that you’ve taken what you’ve learned and now you’ve applied it in a real world setting, in a time crunch. That’s adaptability. If you can do this on the fly, it shows me the maturity that you have a good understanding of what you’re doing, what you’re talking about and you’re not pretending. So now this gives me a better.

It shows me how you not only understand the technology, it shows you how you can apply the knowledge of the technology that you’ve learned. And I think this is important distinction because now it gives me credibility and your ability to signal that learning, but also artifacts that you’re capable of excelling. Again, it gives me a good foundation that you can be applyable, you can be adaptable and you can learn more than what you’ve already shown at the pace at which you can actually do that. Derek.

[00:39:19] Isaac Sacolick: Thank you. Derek. I like this idea of creating a briefing. I mean, if it’s short and sweet, this is a section where you’re actually showing up to an interview and that’s a good leap behind saying, look, you know, I want to talk about this aspect of AI governance and you know, how do we protect our data? Here’s a briefing that is similar to what I’ve done previously. Great example. Go ahead, Martin.

[00:39:45] Martin Davis: So I’m going to go with strategic thinking as a cio. It’s a very important skill any person at the C level.

So I’m going to kind of suggest that you want to make sure that you’re giving a good situation of where you have applied strategic thinking. So you built a strategy for the company, for the technology side of things. So you are specifying what you’re trying to achieve. I’m trying to achieve replacement of legacy technology, but driving the company forward at the same time, things like that. So being clear on what your goals are.

[00:40:24] Heather May: Yeah.

[00:40:25] Martin Davis: Describing the situation and the actions you took, how you went about it. So for example, we upgraded System X, Y and Z. We retired systems A, B and C.

How you did it, what you did and what the results for were, most importantly, what those results are and what the impact of those results were. How did it impact the ability for the company to move forward, the ability of the company to grow, the impact, the reducing cost impact, increasing revenue. Yet put it in terms that the sea level will understand.

Yeah, that’s core. You’ve got to talk the right language, the right language of business.

[00:41:05] Joe Puglisi: Yeah.

[00:41:06] Martin Davis: You don’t want to be going in and talking about bits and bytes at the sea level.

[00:41:11] Isaac Sacolick: So Martin, it’s very interesting because you know, that’s a skill of potentially turning around the question as asked and answering it from the perception perspective of what would the board and this, the C suite want to hear as an answer to around this and giving a top down type of answer that illustrates how you think strategically. I think that’s really smart. Go ahead, Joanne, what’s your skill?

[00:41:39] Joanne Friedman: My skill is value creation.

[00:41:42] Isaac Sacolick: Nice.

[00:41:44] Joanne Friedman: And I’m going to use agentic AI to do it. And I’m going to do it in a way that does not put me in a situation where the board or other members of the C suite are going to say how do you not get sued over that?

And I would say it’s taking it’s creating data products out of information that is anonymized.

And let’s suppose that I have a piece of equipment on the shop floor. I’m going to create a subscription service where I sell that data that’s being used on the daily to the OEM of the piece of equipment. Because they don’t know what happens to their equipment on the daily basis. They only know when I call for trouble for a spares replacement or when I want to buy a new machine. And that creates a brand new revenue stream that can either come out of it or come out of the corporation as a whole. But that shows that I can create a tangible value from something that is just basically digital dust because it gets stored. It might get used for a short period of time, but I’m still paying for the cost of storing that data for years. If in a cloud or on prem, that’s a way that you show value.

[00:43:04] Isaac Sacolick: Joanne, I absolutely love this example because it illustrates thinking about growth and revenue, thinking about potential customers you don’t have. You can do your homework to get the nuances of what data that company likely has and who their buyers might be for that data.

You can get into storytelling mode around it.

There’s a lot of good in talking about this and going in that direction.

[00:43:33] Joanne Friedman: There’s one other thing I forgot to mention. The value that you’re providing to the OEM is, is a closed loop between the customer and their initial ideators. And designers that they do not have.

So you can pull a revenue share. There’s a lot of different ways that you could do this, but basically that’s a really, in my mind, one of the best examples of value that you can create for an organization.

[00:44:02] Isaac Sacolick: Very, very smart. Stay in your comfort zone, but find an expression of innovation that they can sell.

Right? And you can do that from a developer’s perspective, a marketer’s perspective, and create that value and that story and be customer driven. Really like that example. Joanne Heather, Skill and how it should look on the resume, if you have it, and what does it look like if you are signaling mastery but you do not have experience in it?

[00:44:30] Heather May: I would take it one step down from what Derek said. And someone who’s really experienced can really provide a brief, but someone who is less experienced can do a case study.

And you can have bullet points because we already mentioned in your initial slide how, how little time is spent on the actual resume, reading the resume by the recruiter or the hiring team. So if you can have, like three bullets, that. That is about the article about the case study, what the problem was, what the recommendation was, what the solution was, and then have a link to the full case study, either in a link or in a QR code. But you want to make sure that the elements that you include in that case study is why you chose the AI tool that you did. How did you trust and verify the data? Make sure that your approach was very well articulated and not assumed or presumed. You want to make sure that there’s no question.

And then the caution I would have for all people interviewing is make sure that you don’t give away the whole store. Too often people will say, oh, I would do this, I would do this. And then they’re like, great idea. I don’t need to hire the person. Now I have the idea. So you want to give them enough to have an additional conversation about it. Give them enough to wet their whistle, but absolutely don’t tell them everything because then they don’t need you.

[00:45:57] Isaac Sacolick: I think that’s a good recommendation for those that are very technical and, you know, are interviewing for a technical role. If you give out the entire architecture in your interview, it’s, you know, you’re giving away a little too much. Go ahead, Joe. I want to hear your. Your skill and what it looks like on the resume or how you’re presenting it is probably how you’re signaling judgment. Go ahead, Joe.

[00:46:25] Joe Puglisi: I have to double down on things that both Heather and Derek have pointed out when you’re in this conversation and it has to be a conversation, right? I think Heather would agree. You should be listening as much as you are speaking and you should be asking questions as much as you’re answering them.

Your approach has to have some relevance.

I would hang my hat on this keyword relevance. Depending on the job that you’re going for, the examples you discuss of things that you’ve done or written about must be both understandable and applicable. Don’t make assumptions about the person on the other side of the desk. They may or may not understand what you’re talking about.

And so it’s important to get some feedback during the conversation to make sure that you are scoring the points you think you’re scoring. You could be going on and on about how you leverage chat GPT to generate more insight into the ibnr.

You’re talking to a person who’s hiring into a manufacturing operation. They don’t even know what IBNR is.

So make sure that, that whatever skill it is you are trying to demonstrate it has relevance and that you explain it in a way that the person can understand and have applicability. The other point I want to make is that if you’re talking in a more senior level, it’s all about people management, people interaction. And I would cite, if I was looking for a VP level or a CIO level, I would cite some examples of successful change management.

Where have you altered the culture of the organization, introduced a new way, a new process, a new product, Something that you’ve done in your past that’s very demonstrable?

Joe, as Joanne would say, the value that you delivered, be concrete in terms of the, the, the dollars or the percentages.

And again, you know, make sure it’s relevant. So those are my ideas.

[00:48:31] Isaac Sacolick: Joe, let’s jump into our third question because I want to get your input around this. And I think it’s really important about landing the role. Okay. And it’s really disheartening for people to go through a process, you know, after applying to 100x jobs and falling short on 97% of them and you know, getting kicked out in the early stage. And then you finally get to that, you know, one where you’re going through the entire one, you know, you’re one of two, three or four and you get, you know, find out that you didn’t get the role this time and maybe it happens a second time. You know, what’s, what’s happening behind the scenes, what differentiates between finishing second and third and winning the role and what Advice, Joe, do you have for the job seekers who fall short in the final interview? Go ahead, Joe.

[00:49:25] Joe Puglisi: My first and most pointed advice to people who get all the way to landing and they come in as number two or number three, is that sometimes, and I’ll even go so far as to say often, it’s not about you.

It’s not what you did or didn’t do.

It may have been that it was already a foregone conclusion that the CEO’s nephew was going to get the job.

It may be that the person who was your strongest advocate was in a car accident on the way to work that morning, and the other two people in the panel weren’t as high on you as, as he was.

You know, there are a thousand reasons why you don’t get it.

If you don’t get it, take it as a learning exercise.

Two things that you should always do when you come in. Number two, or don’t get the job, regardless of where you place. Number one, take the learnings away from the interview process. What did you do? Well, what could you have done better?

If you have the opportunity to speak with any of the people who interviewed you or anyone along the way in that process, ask them what you could have done different. What could you have done better?

Worst case is nobody’s going to answer you. Best case, you’re going to get some insights and maybe do better next time.

The other thing to, to keep in

[00:50:58] Liz Martinez: mind

[00:51:01] Joe Puglisi: is, is that.

I’ve lost my train of thought.

[00:51:11] Isaac Sacolick: You want us to come back?

[00:51:13] Joe Puglisi: Yeah, come, come back to me. I, I, I had another point. It’s just slipped my mind at the moment.

[00:51:18] Isaac Sacolick: Okay, thank you, Joe. I think this is an important point. Right. And you’ve seen it before when you’ve been a hiring manager or when you’re, you know, doing a selection process for a vendor.

You know, you’re going through a process and there might be somebody or a company that’s already a lock in, but you have to go through the motions anyway.

[00:51:36] Joe Puglisi: Yeah.

[00:51:37] Isaac Sacolick: And I think that’s your point. And yeah, I love this idea of following up with the interviewers.

[00:51:43] Joe Puglisi: Yeah. And that was the other point.

I forgot. Don’t assume that since you lost it, you lost it, you may not have.

It has happened in the past where the number two gets tapped a month or three months later.

So it’s really a good idea not only to reach out, to get some debrief on what you could have done or done differently or done better.

It’s great to reach out even after a month or Two, and say if you can, you know, how are things working out with the new guy? What you might find out is not so good. And now you got a foot in the door.

[00:52:23] Isaac Sacolick: There you go. Go ahead, Heather. I’m. I’m really curious on this one. Let’s talk about, like, what should the person really do if they’re in their final round of interview?

[00:52:34] Heather May: This is something near and dear to my heart, because someone I know very, very well has come in second seven times.

He finally got the job last week, but it was a long, hard road. And it’s very easy to say, it’s not them, it’s not you, it’s them. But seven times is really, really hard.

I think when you go to land the role, you have to really say, and you’re having multiple interviews so people know of you or know about you. Maybe it’s a repeat.

It’s what you leave them with.

And I had seen a number of different videos on this, but if you can start a conversation and then end a conversation where it’s memorable.

This one guy said, instead of introducing yourself as, hi, I’m Heather Mayo, an executive recruiter, I do this, I do that. It’s boring. They’ve checked out. This guy said, I’m in communications. I write the content that keeps you awake in your meetings. Now everyone says, oh, my God, I know what that’s like. They chuckle. If you can be. If you can find some humor, you want to be able for them to say, you know what, that was such a great line. Or, oh, my God, that’s happened to me so many times. Because now you’ve disarmed the interview, you, interviewer, you’ve been elevated in like, okay, they’re a real person, and they’ve been able to demonstrate it.

I also think you say, this is another example. I speak the language of sports. And the interviewer will say, well, what does that mean? So already you’re. Now you’re being highlighted. Okay, tell me what you mean by that. What language? What sports? So it gives you that element of something that they’re going to ask you about that you already know and you want to do that. And at the end, you want to say when you’re leaving, because that’s the last thing that they’re going to remember. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I really think that I can contribute in this, this, in this way, make it authentic, make it real, make it relatable, and make it memorable.

[00:54:35] Isaac Sacolick: Love it. Heather. Thank you for sharing that story. Congratulations to the person you’re Referring to and some really good tips here. You know, when you say, you know, leave them with something memorable, that is a strategic thing you can prepare for. You know, Joe has talked many times about what his opening mission statement is.

Think about how you’re going to close the interview in a way that’s going to help you become memorable and something. We just haven’t said enough here. Do your homework on the person you’re interviewing with, particularly in the last round.

Are they part of your group? Are they a collaborator to your group? Are they potentially a detractor to your group? What’s in it for them if they’re hiring you for the role that you’re going into? So you need to triangulate and figure out what’s the right message and think like a salesperson in that way. Go ahead, Joanne. We’re five minutes, so we gotta be pretty quick here. Got two other hands.

[00:55:37] Joanne Friedman: Okay, so not landing the role. And I’ve had that experience, actually, in a very quick way.

When I was much younger and just probably about five years experience in, I applied for a job. There was a particular individual near and dear to my heart who applied for the same job. We did not encounter each other until we were in the lobby of the building about to go for two different interviews for the same company, for the same job, two different interviewers, and I lost to him, because at that time, the notion was, you give the role to the male, not to the female. Now, some of that bias still exists, and I’m not going to go down that road. But my point is, I was crushed because I couldn’t figure out where I had gone wrong. And I couldn’t figure out even by talking to the person.

And what ended up coming back was one of those weird answers that nobody ever wants to hear, which was, he has a family and you don’t.

And that’s how I found out that I was actually dating someone who was married.

So that was a kicker to the story. But when I later encountered the individuals who were doing the interviewing, I happened to bring up that story. And they both said, oh, we know exactly who you’re talking about. It’s so good to see you again.

So keep in touch and develop the relationships with the people, because even 20 years later, you will still encounter them one way or another.

And although this is a weird anecdote to bring to this conversation, it just shows you that it’s a very small world and every experience has value.

[00:57:26] Isaac Sacolick: Thank you, Joanne, for sharing that story.

Working through not only your credentials, but the biases you’re dealing with on the other end. It’s not an easy chemistry. Go ahead, Derek. We got four minutes.

[00:57:39] John Patrick Luethe: Derek?

Yeah, I think I’m looking at it from a confidence and judgment. You know, I’m looking at not necessarily the most qualified person, but I’m looking at a person who can demonstrate how they can arrive at an answer. I’m looking at a person who can think on their feet. We talked about adaptability, we talked about, you know, other things. And for the people that don’t get it, you know, don’t, don’t tell yourself you need another certification, you got to go get more training. Just ask yourself, I would think. Here are three questions you can look at. You know, did you clearly communicate the business value that you could possibly bring?

Did you demonstrate how you make decisions and how you could talk about them, what you know about them? And did leadership really believe that you could solve the problem? That’s one of the things I would look at because, you know, everybody is Joey mentioned and the others, you’re going to have challenges and sometimes they’re going to have preconceived notions of who they want. So I would look at, you know, just don’t prepare to answer the questions, prepare to demonstrate how you think.

[00:58:32] Isaac Sacolick: Derek, you know, there’s something in how you said this just now that is a really important point. You’ve gone through a couple of rounds of interviews. You’ve learned something about the company and the people.

You know. What you want to be talking about in that final interview is how you’re going to fit into their culture.

[00:58:48] Joe Puglisi: Right?

[00:58:49] Isaac Sacolick: Lots of people can do things and you got to assume that you have a chance at this job, that the other candidates are qualified. Right? You cannot change the culture in the first 90 days at a company. Just doesn’t happen.

Right? So the first 90 days, you are going to fit in and still need to be effective. And that’s something really good interviews or viewers are going to look for. Go ahead, Liz.

[00:59:13] Liz Martinez: Last two seconds. Anecdote from my past.

I came in second or lost, as they say, on a role that I really wanted.

And I was thinking about replaying my mind what happened in the interview where I forgot to say things. What they were really looking for. Is there something that I could show them that might have made a difference? And when I did that, I actually put together a little 30, 60, 90 day plan and I stuck it in there in my thank you note and it actually had them pull my resume out of the, out of the garbage. And I got that Role.

[00:59:53] Isaac Sacolick: Nice.

I like that. Go. I want to hear from Martin and then Joe, we’re going to go a little overtime because it’s just too important of a topic. Go ahead, Martin. Your hand was raised. I saw it.

[01:00:02] Martin Davis: I put it down because we’d run out of time.

[01:00:04] Isaac Sacolick: No, we’re going.

[01:00:06] Martin Davis: Okay.

I think the, the critical thing is kind of matching how you are going to help them.

Yeah. And it’s a case of know as much as you can about what their challenges are.

[01:00:20] Joe Puglisi: Yeah.

[01:00:20] Martin Davis: What their CEO is thinking, where what their challenges in the marketplace are and how you are going to help solve those challenges. That has to be the key thing. So if they bring you in, it’s how are you going to help the challenges? And then the second piece you already said, which is are you a cultural fit? Because more than ever, hirings fail because they bring in somebody who’s not a cultural fit. And I’ll give you a quick example.

When I was at Ford Motor Company, the broadest person in, who was totally alien to the Ford culture and did not fit in square peg and round hole. And sometimes it’s good from a diversity perspective, but if that person, the way they work and behave is so different to the culture of the company, then all they’re going to create is friction.

[01:01:09] Isaac Sacolick: There you go. All about culture in the last statement. I think we’re in agreement around that. Joe, final word today.

[01:01:16] Joe Puglisi: I think Martin nailed it. You can learn new technologies, you can study the business and learn that. You can learn the marketplace. You can learn a lot of stuff, but your personality is who you are and you need to fit in. And so when you’re in that interview, keep in mind that the key here is fitting in exactly as Martin said.

[01:01:41] Isaac Sacolick: Thank you, everybody. Great topic here today, folks. Tell your friends, your colleagues about the coffee with digital trailblazers we meet here every week. Our topic next week is going to be about vibe coding and how you’re going to build AI agents. October 9th, we’ll talk about change management and leading AI adoption in your company.

On the 16th, leading into my Houston October 27th roundtable, we’ll be talking about AI infrastructure debt. For those of you scaling AI and thinking about cloud versus on prem versus what’s the architecture? How do we deal with data? We’ll talk about capacity, resiliency and modernization on the 16th. On the 23rd, finishing strong, how digital leaders close out the year.

And the 30th, we are going to have a debate and actually try to come up with some guidelines on which AI agents are designed for human augmentation, which are human in the middle and which are going to become fully agentic. Thanks for joining this week. Thanks to all my speakers. We’ll see you here next week. And do sign up for the events you can go to drive.

The 2nd and the 9th are there. I’ll have the remaining ones next week. And everybody have a great weekend.