How AI Transformed My Job Hunt: Addy's Job Search Story

0:00You're going to do a bunch of interviews. most of them are going to go wrong either because of you or because of them. You're going to send hundreds of resumes out there. You're not going to hear back from everybody. Your network will ghost you. And all of those things came true.

0:19All right. Welcome everyone to Denoised. We're going to do a little bit of a different format episode today. We're going to talk about something that I think for better or worse, a lot of people are dealing with job hunting or job uncertainty. Unemployment. unemployment, transitions in jobs, and how to use AI tools and other tools out there to navigate that with firsthand experience with you, Addy, who just went through this process. We mentioned a few episodes ago that you're now at Stability AI. But yeah, you went through a whole ordeal of interviews and prep and leaning on ChatGPT a lot. So yeah, let's break down.

0:54I just got to say, man, really happy to have had you next to me that entire time. I mean, since we started doing the podcast in January, which is around the time I got laid off till, you know, a few weeks ago when I got the job, you have been there to watch the ups and downs. Yeah. And I'm checking to be like, how the interview go? Off camera. I think I'm good. Not so good. Yeah. So where do you want to start with this? I'll start with sort of the high level, what happened to me, and then how I navigated through it. And then we'll get down into maybe some of the details. And look, I want this to be a takeaway for those of us listening out there who's still looking for work.

1:37And, you know, in our industry, that's unfortunately more true than not. There's a lot of people that are looking for work. If we can even help you by 1%, 2%, I think that's a win for us. Yeah, I think so. If it just gives you an idea or something to look for. Exactly. another idea of how to use chat gpt or clod or any of these ai models and i yeah ai definitely helped me a ton and i'm not talking about you know spit out this resume no it's it's much more financed than that and i'll get into it so yeah in a very high level i was laid off from disguise and that happened in january not because of performance you know as you know i was i was a big part of that company and um the leadership i still love them they still love me it was just a very crude business decision that just needed to be made.

2:26The company needed to shift direction because they have private equity and they have investors and they need to show growth. Unfortunately, that growth was not coming from the side of the company I was managing, which was our industry, film and television. Yeah. Not a good indicator, but not a surprise there. Right. So right after the strikes in 23, we thought we would see somewhat of a recovery in 24, that recovery kind of came lukewarm. And then in 25, it really didn't show, right? So, I think the leadership, I got to say, did the right thing, even though I was part of the decision. Yeah, these are shitty, tough calls.

3:06Yeah. Yeah, they pivoted to, you know, another new segment, immersive and big location install, stuff like the sphere, which is, I think, where a lot of the growth is happening. And a lot of people from our industry are transitioning to. So right then and there, you know, I have this virtual production expertise. There's a handful of people around the world that have sort of the level of knowledge and education that I've had. Very fortunate to kind of work my way up to it over the last 15 years or so to be at that level. But then I also realized like, you're still at the mercy of the film and tv industry no matter how much of an expert you are yeah it's one industry and there's no diversity yeah there or if the entire industry is not doing well what are you gonna do even though you're really good at your job and i think that's where a lot of our listeners find themselves is like i'm an amazing new compositor i know it i've done this marvel movie i've done the star wars movie i can build things in nuke for vfx but if there is no movie to work on what do I do?

4:12Yeah, as using Nuke needs this level of VFX work. So right then and there, I immediately pivoted into freelancing and doing contract work, which I found actually relative success in. And it's sort of a misnomer because you would think that like that stuff is not lucrative. It absolutely can be. And I found that I was making the same amount of money, but working half the amount. so just for 10 15 hours a week i guess that's less than half i was pretty much making the same amount of money yeah and i like that yeah there's less there's no less stability and no benefits no benefits and also the pipeline is unclear right like i had my pipeline for february march april but i wasn't sure about may june right and during those three months i was uh juggling three or four different consultation jobs and looking for work which was in itself a full-time job as you know yeah yeah so we'll get into that and then on a personal note it felt like both the best of times and the worst of times and i say that poetically because it really was where's that quote from wasn't that charles dickens movie film we can go with that i know it's from a classic book i do not remember the specific book sounds like yeah right sounds sounds accurate enough best of times meaning like I really got clarity on my life you know I'm not a young chicken anymore I have kids I you know I have mortgages and so on so like I got a clarity on what's important and over the last three years I was traveling a lot as you know just kind of lost track of all of that and you know I was not paying much attention to my health I was not spending much time with my kids I was not eating well.

6:02I was maybe drinking a little bit too much and got a chance to really hit a reset button on all of the above. That's good for you. Seeing the positives of like, well, at least you can have a reset. Because, yeah, it does the travel and bouncing around in restaurants. And you have a sales target on your head and you're constantly worried about that. Take it to all. Yeah. I mean, you and I used to run into conferences all the time. Yes. so uh i think even look if you're out there you're looking for work just remember there is a huge silver lining in all of this is that you have the power to reset your life and pick a new direction and choose the things you want to do and the things that you don't want to do the worst of times is that it's ultimately not about working hard and pushing your way through sheer brute force it's really a survival game.

6:52So the pipeline for contracts can dry up. I could not have anything to work on for six months. Financially, what am I going to do? How am I going to pay the bills? The other thing, uh, you know, work gave me was a sense of fulfillment and a sense of purpose and all those things that I think your brain kind of needs at this stage in your life to kind of function correctly. Purpose and impact. Yeah. And then also, you know, you miss the social circle And I don't just mean my coworkers, but the entire industry. When you're just sucked out of it, all of a sudden, you feel like you're in isolation.

7:27And that stuff is not good. So again, best of times, force of times. So my jobs, initially, I thought the first couple of months doing so well with freelancing is that I could just do this forever. And I know people in our industry, I think you and I both know them, that just do freelancing. They do really well for themselves. and I I mean yeah the bulk of people I know are freelancers I mean yeah pretty much anyone on set is for the most part is a freelancer yeah it's gig to gig physical production is mostly freelance right yeah I mean I think even like Greg Frazier or somebody at that level is basically a freelancer yeah you work on a project it's a contract for the project technically you're a w-2 employee for that film but it's a gig yeah it's a gig it has an end date I think corporate folks can't make that transition over to freelance and vice versa yeah it's it it's tougher yeah when you have that bi-weekly paycheck coming in every two weeks to switch to a more uncertain a less certain for sure lifestyle i think financially as well and also just how your operating system in your brain works like i i can't you can put me into any office corporate environment and i'll figure out the org chart i'll figure out how to get shit done right within worked at verizon worked at nbc universal like big companies with you know hr departments and marketing departments and so on and you know you go to in the freelance world it's like wait there is no department there isn't it's just you it's you figure that shit out and uh go make your money right so i think that so we're just inherently two different buckets and that's okay that and things still get done in each of those buckets.

9:05So I think I remember telling you this, like, hey, Joey, I think I'm going to file for like a freelance business license, you know, S Corp or whatever. And as I was doing the paperwork, I was like, I don't think I want this. Okay. I think I want a job. And not because it's easy. Jobs are, you know, especially at, you know, VP level and high senior level. It's hard. It's a lot of toll. But I decided I want a job, one, because I think I want to be part of the next wave of innovation and i don't think it's going to come from the freelance world and also i want to be able to do this podcast i want to stay in la which was a big thing yeah yeah um yeah right yeah i've seen a really good friend of mine move out to north carolina and not come back um switch industries switch industries i've had offers out of state you know So, and with LA sort of kind of dying out in our industry, I thought like, I got to do everything to make sure I stay here.

10:05This is where I was born, raised, my kids born, raised. If there's a fire here, earthquake here, we're going to stay here through and through, you know. So, those were my big decision factors and that's what I went with. Now that I've figured out, okay, I need to get a full-time job, what positions? Yeah. So, there is no such thing as virtual production positions anymore, like at least not for a while. as you will probably see. That is a staff salary position. Staff salary at a big studio. That's not a gig of like a VP supervisor on a production. I've got. Yeah. Yeah. I can do those all day long.

10:41But yeah, let's say NBCUniversal needs a VP supervisor for their stage. Well, they already have one. They're not building more stages. If you go to Nant or Synapse or, you know, Pixamondo, they're staffed. They're good. Yeah. They're not expanding anytime soon. There's only a finite number of stages. Yeah. So the thing that I'm good at doesn't have the positions that I want. So that's my number one problem. Okay. So then I have a mentor who kind of coached me through it. And thank God there are people like my mentor. Big shout out to Kevin. He's like, well, your skills actually apply because you've done technical management.

11:17You understand, you know, the creative technical trade-offs. You'd be really good at product management. So why don't you look for product management roles? Okay. all right, there are tons of product management roles, especially in big tech. A lot of startups, you know, A16Z startups and private equity backed startups are looking for PMs, senior PMs. And then technical program managers is another one. And some of those positions were up north. And I was like, man, okay, I guess. So that was the direction I went in. And I got to say, what I heard as I was getting let go was like you know you're gonna do a bunch of interviews most of them are gonna go wrong either because of you or because of them you're gonna send hundreds of resumes out there you're not gonna hear back from everybody your network will ghost you and all of those things came true like it was really that um and i i think our viewers out there will totally agree like if you look at it with the wrong lens it could be pretty bleak and it could be it could get you down into a really dark place because people you know they really don't have the position to help you like they can't get you the job the best they can do is they could steer you to a recruiter which is enormous help but yeah that's not going to close the deal yeah did you ever think of using a recruiter like hiring like a headhunter yeah yeah yeah i that was like the the last thing i was going to turn on and for unfortunately i didn't have to go there the whole like you know I don't know if you saw the Workday lawsuit.

12:54Workday being like the resume management system for a lot of companies. They recently got sued because their AI had built-in biases. So it was naturally rejecting a lot of resumes. And I got to say 90 % of the companies I applied at had Workday as the resume interface. Do you think your name was getting flagged? I don't know if it was DEI. maybe they were looking for certain keywords in the resume that I didn't have and it was very binary so instead of giving one a pass it just you know kind of threw it into the trash bin and I you know you're looking at for a given position because our industry is in a downturn right so there's an oversupply so for every one job there's probably a couple hundred applicants and there's probably a thousand resumes of people that don't qualify and then maybe 50 or 60 that aren't qualified.

13:47And then out of that, you got to pick the right one. So for a workday system or even a recruiter, that's a lot of stuff to go through and they're hiring for 10, 15 positions. So they're probably funneling through hundreds of resumes a day. Yeah. I feel like from that end, you're looking for like any reason to be no. Like, yeah, it's like, please just give me a reason to like put you in the no pile. Cause like I got so many to go through. And my resume is really easy to say bye-bye too because you look at my experience which is so niche right you're looking led volume what is that like for most people they have no idea i mean we saw the joke in the studio right that weird the weird volume yeah mandalore that's me yeah so that's my whole career and so i i definitely got a lot of you know automated responses back so i and these were just sort of for project manager roles like in all sorts of tech industries yeah so i applied at big tech companies like you know you name it google apple meta nvidia adobe all of the above fan companies as they're called or the magnificent seven and uh yeah i i think so i did get a couple of interviews not because of the resumes but because through second degree connection i got introductions yeah just enough to get the recruitment process going your network comment reminded me of um i forgot which book it was one of the malcolm gladwell books from a while ago but it was like of like how jobs and connections come through the weak ties.

15:15Cause it's like, if you're a media network, you kind of know the same people, you know, the same stuff. So like not that much is going to emerge out of it that you don't already know, but it's these friend of a friend kind of weak referral things that is where the opportunities can come up. It's like, I don't really know you, but oh, this thing kind of did come up and you know, maybe you'd be a fit for it. Yeah. And I got to say like, as far as how, you know, your connections and networks respond to your recent use, that was surprising some people just really didn't give a shit maybe because they were they were inundated by other people's requests but then i had some people that i haven't talked to in months just kind of reach out like hey do you need help uh are you okay i was like wow that's so nice and um you know even at some some of the bigger companies um i have friends that work at amazon and netflix and stuff like that disney look they they probably get tens if not hundreds of you know can you introduce me to blah blah blah requests even at that level the friends that i had there were nice enough to actually make the introduction which was so cool yeah so that's all you can i think ask for the rest is really up to you they can only show you the door you got to walk through it and i'll give you two examples of when the company messed up versus when i dropped the ball and i messed up yeah so the first one where the company messed up and this is like as heartless and terrible as it gets is i'm not going to name the company but it's a big tech company up north and they're based in san jose that's all i'm going to say the position was incredibly lucrative you're looking at uh half a million dollars or more in salary is a very high level it's so high level that uh the recruiters have something called executive recruiters it's like another it's like boss level recruiters okay like a special recruiter just for like these types of roles for like you know vps and so on so an executive recruiter i got introduced to an executive recruiter i emailed her i didn't hear anything back for a week i was like okay it's fine and then her assistant recruiter emailed me and said we're really interested to talk to you okay great and i responded right away of course these are very timely thing and i didn't hear back anything first week i kept responding two weeks goes by three weeks goes by four weeks goes by i'm like okay forget it and then all of a sudden the main recruiter the boss level recruiter she emails me and says hey we are so sorry your email got lost can we talk right now i'm driving can we talk tomorrow yeah sure okay so i'm like oh my god so okay and then i do a lot of research on this company and that's where chat gpt comes in yeah you need to know who the executive team is you need to know their market cap you need to know what their mission statement is how are you using chat gpt is like a deep research kind of tool or just straight up vanilla chat gpt and what i do is i have like something like a google doc i'll create for every position and i'll just start throwing stuff into that google doc and condense it so it all fits in one page so i could print out just a single page and have a study guide cheat sheet chat gpt was crucial for that so this boss level recruiter comes on the call the video call i'm like okay dear let's go addy and she's like hey addy thanks for joining the call listen i didn't want to email you and tell you this but we just made an offer to another candidate and we just wanted to tell you in person that um we're not going to be going with you and i didn't want to do it over email so i thought this was a better way to do it i was like this is absolutely the worst way to do it tell me yeah it's like you gave me the false hope but dude i was wearing a blazer for that interview because it was an exec level thing it's just like getting dumped at a bar so that that's an example of how they mess up the process they simply dropped the ball on responding to me on time and some other other candidate went through the entire thing in four weeks was it like you fell through the cracks or did your email go to spam or did they they like i said they probably because they get hundreds of resumes a week.

19:25It's just impossible for them to just like surface a few of them. And I feel like with that one, you should have checked back in. I did. Oh, you did check. You were following up. I have the whole email trail like every few days I was pinging. Okay. I have a background in sales. The seven sales touch points. I was not about to let this one go. So yeah, that was, that was an example of them fumbling it. Okay. Now I'm not without blame. I'll give you an example of when I fumbled it. There was an interview with a very big company that's in the world of games, let's say. And this was also a really high level position.

20:02Salary was also in that. This thing, you're making a few thousand dollars on a contract gig and these salaries are like half a million to three quarter million. Your payroll check is going to be the contract gig check. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you're like, how can I not take this seriously? How can I not be emotional about this? Because this is literally night and day. So I did really well with this company for the first three interviews. And it was a recruiter, then hiring manager, then a technical expert. And then I was on to a second technical expert. This gaming company was a competitor to another company that I am deeply familiar with.

20:45And so when they grilled me on technical stuff, I kept referring to the competitor technology as my North Star. I was like, well, do you know rendering technology? And I was like, well, actually, I know about rendering because I used it on competitor technology. And the interview ended a few minutes early. and this is the thing that he said at the last sentence well it was really good to know you and either way let's keep in touch either way when they say that that means it's a no like right then and there and that was like the second time i heard it so it really stuck out i was like god i messed up i messed up because no matter what capability and knowledge you have you're still wearing a jersey at that company and those companies the people that have been there for years and years have developed a culture and cultivated a us versus them mentality so even if your knowledge stacks up against the competitor you're still an expert in the competitor stuff and not in their stuff and that's a no they don't want somebody to come in and rock the boat they don't want somebody to disrupt what their culture is right they already know the answers they just want you to repeat it it should have just come from either just don't mention anything because you can come in fresh and they can shape you yeah versus mentioning the competitor products yeah i mean a very very crude example if you're interviewing a coca-cola you can't say like well at pepsi i did this and at pepsi i did that at pepsi like they're like okay go back to pepsi then right right or it's like we don't want to like we don't want a pepsi guy untrain you of bad quote bad habits that's it yeah so that was my mistake because i didn't know that that could actually be a thing because i'm thinking rationally i'm like look these skills are one-to-one no matter where i write or look i'm very familiar with the competitor product like yeah i gotta leg up to help your product too right they don't want that yeah so mess that one up and then uh lastly one of the one so i had them all together i think like seven interview tracks and each of the tracks are on average seven or eight interviews in yeah so you're looking at about i went through 50 interviews in three months yeah that's a that's a big a lot of interviews yeah and i and you were there you know i was like hey joey we're gonna tape half an hour later today you're right yeah i got an interview yeah and you come in like how'd it go i was like i think it went well and it always the the but you know maybe it's just me misreading other than that one uh most of the time it reads really like positive yeah because the people on the other end are nice too they're not being vindict they're not trying to not hire you yeah i'm sure for them too it's like yeah they want like please we want to find a good quality candidate that fits this role yeah and they're professionals they're going through their day they're not going to be a jerk to you if they don't like you they're still going to be nice to you was every single interview remote or do you have any in-person interviews yes one just one out of 50 yeah and there's a there's a big office here in LA and yeah okay so the in-person interview I interviewed with the boss went great he ran the place he's like great love you somebody like you would be perfect here then I interview with his right-hand person and I tell her about my background in motion capture and she says something to the effect of oh I hate motion capture and I knew right then and there I was like ah fuck like yes these as opposed to what these net as opposed to animation uh okay yeah period like so these natural biases that the interviewers had had they not tilted in your favor you would not get it like these are things that are beyond your control like a bias to you which is like i want something that you know kind of like me like and it goes back to what i'm saying they already know the answers they just want you to repeat it to them so if i completely bullshitted and said something like, yeah, I hate motion capture and I love animation, even though I've spent a decade in motion capture, that's what they would want to hear.

24:43So again, it's 50-50 you and 50-50 them. And the other thing I learned, I had a really nice headhunter from Andreessen Horowitz. You know, the big, she was really nice to give me like 30 minutes of her time. And, you know, she wasn't hiring. It was just more me just talking to a recruiter and just finding out what their thought process is and i was like i asked her i was like what is the hardest part for you to like match people with companies and she said it's just it's timing and she's right look we're we're only going to be unemployed for so long like if you're out there you don't have a job trust me it'll come it's only a window that you are in this and the dream job is only open for a window right it's open from may till yeah because there's also like your timing of your unemployment versus the timing of the role that's open and hoping that the two align.

25:37Exactly. And that's the hardest part is alignment on the timing windows, which was such key insight. And I really appreciated her. Yeah. Going back to the stability offer and yeah, I went through, I think about eight or nine interviews. And how did that role come up? Was that like open application or was that like a friend of a friend network in the network. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. In this day and age, I'll say this. If you're throwing resumes out there, just stop. Don't even bother. Yeah. Figure out weak connections, figure out second degree, third degree connections and roll your dice that way.

26:16Yeah. I'll say from what I can offer in this, cause I'm a weirdo and usually do gig or like my own stuff and I've not been on the job that much, but I've been on the other end of like hiring usually just you know either crew or um sometimes part-time roles but i have like a few times dabbled with posting stuff on indeed and you know from the receiving end because it's so easy to apply to jobs uh you know with you know click the button there's just a pile of junk of applicants you know people have absolutely nothing to do with the role that i'm posting for yeah they're like i worked at a warehouse in walmart can i do video editing yeah and so there is a huge noise problem on the receiving end.

26:58And that's what Workday and those systems are supposed to solve is filtering, but they over filter. Right. Yeah. They can over filter. Right. Or yeah, just yeah, feed out bad stuff. I'll also say, I mean, this is me too. Like I try to, I know everyone hates cover letters. I try to put requests in for indicators and my request for cover letters. Honestly, I look at the cover letters more than the resume just because the resume can kind of put whatever you want on there and like doesn't really tell you much like i'll try to put some questions in in the cover letter to asking also a just make sure you read the thing yeah and uh be just also like get a little bit more of you or your personality or just like something i think i'll put stuff like you know what's your favorite youtube channel yeah just general easy questions but like to help it filter out if you read it and also like you know are you into this stuff for sure i agree with you i yeah i i've done a lot of hiring at my previous roles i've hired at least 15-20 people in my career and um i always prioritize soft skills and the ability to learn over subject matter expertise for sure right because a lot of things it was like i don't care that much if you're an expert ish if you're willing to learn and if you you know it feels like there's a you know yeah a good vibe and you're open to you know figuring stuff out yeah like can you figure stuff out like cool that's more important than for sure your skill set and i i I think because we're in an economic downturn, the hiring process has gotten more conservative.

28:25And I think there's less of that where they're looking for somebody to come in and fill the role. Now, because we're in an oversupply state, they're like, it's just easier to just find the exact person that does this exact thing. Yeah. So they rolled the dice on that. And that was my general observation with the industry. Now, look, I am super happy that I'm in an industry that is growing, not shrinking, right? The AI industry is literally in the first few years now. You interviewed so many startup companies at AI on the lot, Luma AI and so on. We're seeing, you know, Asteria here in this town, obviously stability here in this town as well.

29:07But we're seeing the complete opposite of Hollywood, right? Like Warner Brothers is now thinking about breaking the companies up into two. Right. There was a big layoff at Disney that was not announced. And yeah, so the best of times, worst of times thing. One of the things that was for me the best was I actually got to pivot. I actually got to get out of virtual production for a bit and go into AI. And that was something that it was fully self-directed. I had agency over. You saw me go from like a complete AI noob when we first started to do the podcast to like running Comfy UI on my own, downloading models on this very same machine.

29:44Yeah, I mean, you were doing that before stability. You were like, in your time off, you're like, well, let me figure out this stability. I mean, let me figure out Comfy and figure out, you know, what this stuff does. Yeah. So, yeah, that's like, you know, just a word of advice. Like, you have the ability to learn new things at whatever age. And most of you have a nice computer at home and a monitor and chat GPT and the window to the world. Yeah. I think if you adapt the mindset of, you know, open minded and trying to figure out and get a handle on what's happening and being able to roll it into your skill set.

30:20And if you can be the person who like, yes, I'm an editor. Yes, I am a project manager, but I'm also leaning on using AI tools to, you know, be more productive and level up my skill set. I think that makes you more valuable. For sure. It differentiates you. And it's not like the thing that you are an expert in will go away. Like I can, in a couple of years, if I want to go back to virtual production, I probably can. Like I, the technology wouldn't have shifted that far. But the benefit is I'll go back with AI expertise. Right. Yeah. It's like now you can go back to virtual production, but know how to build AI into the pipeline.

30:57Build models. Yeah. Yeah. So those were my big takeaways. Where did you start or how did you use ChatGPT? Yeah. Aside from the research, how else did you use it? So interview prep. So if you are having an interview ahead and you think that you're just going to nail it as is, you're not. Guarantee you that's not going to go well. Interview preps. so interviews are broken down into probably three categories at least for me being in the technical field i think in the creative field it's a little bit different so there'll be a behavioral round so they're gonna assess you as how you are built right how you solve problems how you interact with people what you do when things get tough what you do when things are ambiguous those are behavioral It's just in your DNA.

31:45Number two is technical. So it's how you approach a problem that you need to solve. So in the engineering world, do you break down a bigger problem into modular or smaller problems? And how do you leverage a team? And then what's the difference between R &D and product and applied research and engineering and infrastructure? All those departments exist more or less the same at different companies. How do you differentiate between them? And then the third one will be subject matter expertise or SME. So like, okay, you say that you're a virtual production expert. Let's put it to the test. What is the dot pitch of this product?

32:23And what is more A? And why is Unreal frustrant this way? And all these like subject matter expertise questions. So you have to prep for each of those separately in its own way. And the recruiter is always going to be very helpful. They're going to be your best friend. They're giving you a cheat sheet. They're going to tell you who's interviewing you, what their background is, and the types of questions that's going to be coming your way. So, for example, the behavior on the say, oh, this person is the head of HR. He's going to be asking you about your previous leadership roles, how you dealt with adversity, how you dealt with feedback.

33:00That's your prep right there. Like go to ChadGPT, plug those in and see what kind of responses you get and see if you agree with those responses or not. Don't just let ChatGPT dictate you. Give ChatGPT the questions and ask it to respond to these interview questions and then kind of see what the response is. Yeah, it's like, I like that response. So then you write one line from that response, one line from this. And then you can start to have your own personality and your own characteristic on top of what ChatGPT is giving you. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a good, it's not like, oh, I'm just regurgitating what the AI says.

33:37I think it's more of a better just like I blank out on stuff and I forget to mention things. It's just a good reminder. Where do I even start? Right. Of like things to include in your responses to, you know, that just to jostle your memory or jostle like things you should include that you might forget or not think of. For sure. It's just like a nudge, right? And then one of the things ChatGPT gave me was like, this is well known in the recruitment world is the STAR method. So there's frameworks on how you answer questions. uh so in behavioral questions it's a situation task action and result okay so if i ask you hey joey uh when you had to fire somebody how did you do it you set it up well here's the situation this person was coming in late to work every day and then here this person task this person was assigned this major project action we had to get rid of this person because our company was losing millions of dollars a month result, we hired somebody better and we saved the project.

34:36Right. So like there's frameworks for all this stuff and ChatGPT is really good at frameworking your response. Right. Okay. So you can type a bunch of stuff in and it'll just like completely regurgitate it. Give me this response back with the star method. In product management circles, there is a different product management framework from different companies. Like Google manages a product a certain way. I think Facebook uses something called DIMM, D-I-M-M, and then so on. And then in the sales world, there is frameworks for how you navigate the sales journey. The most well-known one is MEDIC, M-E-D-I-C-C.

35:13Okay. Each letter stands for something. But these are the things that LLM is really good at summarizing for you and giving it to you. Yeah, yeah. I've used it for marketing, writing, and stuff. Marketing also has some frameworks. Yeah. Yeah, pain and I can't think of those right now, but yeah, frameworks. Yes. Yeah. And look, end of the day, like I said, out of the 50 interviews, most of them didn't work out right. I did get an offer from another company, but it was not a good offer. The takeaway is don't worry about it. You know what you're worth. You know what you could do. And the right opportunity will come to you.

35:52all you have to do is keep on improving your process, optimize your interview skills, tap into your network. And if you do that enough, it's just a matter of time. Did you use any of the voice modes to role play interviews or get critique on your feedback on your responses? That's interesting. I did not do that. I probably should have. Okay. Yeah. I've been trying to dabble with that more, even just in more like practicing, just general interviewing. Obviously it's transcribing what you're saying. So it's not, as useful for the, like my response right now of like handling stumbling or other things, because the transcript is going to be a lot cleaner.

36:28But yeah, I've been curious if, or looking for like other tools, even if they're third party using the models that, you know, actually listen to your delivery and critique you or coach you on public speaking or interview responses. Yeah. That's a, I mean, I don't know if there's a product. Do voice mode, which would also help you just practice talking and have a mock interview with the voice mode on chat gpt or perplexities is pretty good too okay yeah so i'm look there's really no product that is in this space of uh ai interview coaching real-time interactive i think you stumbled on something really i'm gonna build it go ahead just let us know a lot of people could use it yeah that's cool yeah uh on the i'm trying to think on the flip side you know if our listeners are freelancers and trying to stick with it you know i have a friend who's a professional editor and you know he says he's always like while he's on the current project trying to you know because his projects have an end date and so he's like trying to book the next the next project yeah for when his ends uh you know and sometimes they'd extended but you know he'll be like well you know already have i'm booked out on another project but he's working his network and you know meeting with people and trying to do lunches and stuff all the time before he needs it.

37:44On the freelance side, what I learned was like, you can't be a generalist. You have to be a subject matter expert to get your worth. One of the best advice that I got from a really successful freelancer was like, look, if you're going to do a gig, charge well. And if they don't pay you, don't do it. Simple as that. And that's how I was making the... Especially if you're a subject matter expert. They're going to pay because it's still cheaper than hiring somebody full-time yeah and for something specialized like that there's only handful of people who right know the intricacies of uh running a virtual production wall for sure yeah and so i thought okay so the best way to be that is to just make noise and advertise what you're good at rather than telling the world like now i can do modeling and rigging and shading and lighting and also virtual production instead of that just say hey in case you forgot i have done virtual production practically for the last 10 years.

38:42And I've been to and ran with and educated stages all around the world. So hit me up if you're ready. And just leave it out there. The people that value you will reach out to you. I think that's the part. There's just too many generalists now. And so find your lane and be really good at it. That's my advice. I was thinking too, I haven't built it yet, but for sourcing or filtering, if you're on the job hunt through job postings, especially gig postings, like on Staff Me Up or on Mandy or Facebook, maybe not Facebook posts, but anyway, any of the tools that send out daily digests of posts, there are a handful of tools.

39:23There's one I've been using more and more relay. And it's sort of like a Zapier, but with more AI tools built in, and it has better integration with your email. And so you could basically set it up. So like, you can automatically tag all of those digest emails and then it'll go to a relay trigger and the ai can kind of read the emails and you could give it a prompt to be like you know filter it just for production tasks or something that's like a bit more specific to you so it can filter out more relevant posts and you probably even set up to like research the company or the person that posted it yeah but i think there's some tools there to help automate the process to just help source better opportunities for you yeah for sure one of the things that i did and i highly recommend is paying for linkedin premium yeah it unlocked so first of all i think it does something to your algorithm where you show up in other people's feed more also the job search tools are way better and then you could send in mails which are like yeah those are super valuable um a couple of those i did get replies back okay cool yeah the emails are good because it's basically you can email whoever you want and without being their friend right without you don't have to be connection and linkedin will send them a few email like reminders yeah like hey you got this in mail yeah three days ago yeah so it's good to get um and they definitely read it yeah they'll definitely see it so it's so annoying that they're gonna yeah i got some random ass in mails but yeah same they yeah the the premium is is worth the money for what they offer i totally got this job because of linkedin and i even put that on my linkedin profile that linkedin helped me get this job because first i saw the opening on linkedin and And all of the networking that I did happened on LinkedIn.