Luis:
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of the DistantJob podcast. I am your host, Luis. As usual, in this podcast, that’s all about building and leading awesome remote teams. My guest today is Jamie Power. Jamie is a career adviser with extensive expertise in the job market. He has worked as a trainer of unemployed people in Jobcare, and as community management for the remote recruitment platform, Abodoo. Currently is a guest trainer and remote recruitment workshops. Jamie, thank you for being in the show.
Jamie Power:
Thanks a million for having me, Luis. Delighted to be here.
Luis:
It’s great. It’s great having you. It’s nice having your recruit around the podcast. It’s been a long time. Specifically, considering that DistantJob is a recruitment company, we should have more recruiters on, but the stars just haven’t aligned. But I’m looking forward to you talking about remote recruiting.
Jamie Power:
Absolutely.
Luis:
Why don’t we start, really, how do you think that the remote setting both for candidates and for companies and for yourself has influenced your work? How have new types of recruitment been made possible through remote, or helped you make your own recruitment process better?
Jamie Power:
Yeah. I would say, in terms of the recruitment process from the recruiter side, finding candidates is becoming a more and more, I suppose, specific process where you want to actually get more detail, before you’ve obviously met somebody face-to-face, because when you’re actually bringing somebody into a traditional role where you’re going to meet them onsite, you almost save a little bit for that point, where I will save that for an interview face-to-face, whereas, now, it’s all happening remotely. You’re also getting more candidates depending on what platform you use because you can have candidates from anywhere.
On the flip side, from the candidate’s point of view, that’s what actually got me looking for a fully remote role. I moved my family from Dublin to Wexford last year and quickly realized that the commute really didn’t suit our family lifestyle. I left the job I was in and began to look for jobs. The first thing I realized was, “Okay, there are jobs in my local area, but not even a small percentage of how many jobs there was when I lived in Dublin, in the capital,” but now, when I look at remote jobs, okay, it broadens out the options. First, it’s also broadened the idea options for the employers, depending on the job. Not all of them are looking for people from anywhere in the world. I had more competition.
I think, really, for both the recruiters and the candidates, the recruiters want to be looking for the people who actually are noticing that, “I’m up against more competition. Therefore, I’m going to make it bigger effort, that a recruiter isn’t going to have to read between the lines and do too much guess work on my application.” I guess that explains in itself as well what candidates are needing to do in that space as well.
Luis:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes absolute sense. You moved one year ago. What changed your mind, what actually changed your mind the most over that year? What were some things that you thought were true about working remotely and working with remote people that happened not to be true? What were some things that surprised you and what were some things that disappointed you?
Jamie Power:
Well, I think there were two big changes to that. Firstly, I had actually worked remotely before. I just didn’t even know I did because there wasn’t all of this terminology around it, or at least not that I was aware. When I was 21, so nine years ago and a bit more now, nearly 10 years ago I left the job I was in for five years. I had been working in a pub and not licensed, but on the side, I had been getting involved in my local music scene. I left there to set up my own business. As a music teacher, contracting myself back the music schools and local art centers and also getting involved in local arts events that had musicians at them. I got a van.
I got all of these equipments. All of a sudden, I had to … It’s a similar story to one of the last call you had on, who said he began remote by accident. I can’t remember his name now, but I did a lot of my work remotely even though a lot of it was on a site, in a music school. For every hour I did in a music school or an art center, I did just as many hours at home, learning how to do business, learning how to do things like get on my own accounts, invoicing, creating logos or doing what people were creating for me and all the stuff that comes with trying to sell yourself. I was working from home tons, all of a sudden where I got a van, I got a laptop. I was on the road and I was working at home on the laptop.
I basically lived in a co-working home. Again, this is before we started talking about co-working homes. I was sharing a house with some entrepreneurs who settled. They called it Whole Pegs. They were looking for one more person to live with them. I heard about it because it was in my local area. I thought, “That looks cool.” They made a cool video to like. They basically said, “We’re looking for entrepreneurs to live here.” It’s a massive house. Almost in a country feeling part of the suburbs but still close to Dublin. We’ve got enough space of the house where one level of the house is for offices. One level is for common space and then the top level is for living.
That was amazing. I didn’t even know where it was. It’s only since I’ve been working in the remote space that I’ve looked back and realized, “Holy crap, I was living in a co-working home,” and it was called Whole Pegs but it still didn’t … Guys who lived there, they were tech guys, building ops and they had sound companies and recording studios and stuff. They knew all this. I was still in the music space, had just come out of pub space. All the lingo was just oblivion. I was oblivious to it. I’ve done it before, but I did it in parse is what I’m saying. I also did it in part when I was on the road a bit as a sales rep, but I thought that doing it full-time, and being fully remote, was just going to be the business, it’s going to be amazing. I can just be away from people, around space.
I’m an extrovert, but I like quality when it comes to my own space and tied together. I’m an extrovert that likes quality introversion when it comes my way. I thought that was going to be amazing, but I missed the interactions with people. I missed it… I’ve said it to a few people recently; I missed breakfast with my colleagues in the morning in the office and lunch with them, and then the point afterwards with your coworkers who I got on with. Then the second thing that you asked me, what changed. First thing was that I thought that being fully remote, which was an unknown to me, I thought it was going to be amazing. Actually I missed some parts of the hybrid piece. Then secondly was having kids. I had never done it while I had kids as well.
That was a bit of a game changer as well, even before COVID hit, it was a bit of a game changer because I had to really be a lot more intentional about how I planned or I worked when I worked, how I worked at planning out around my family’s needs, which is one of the benefits of remote work. But then you actually have to do the organization around it. Your boss doesn’t do that bit for you. You’ve got to do that bit. That’s yours. But it’s worth it if you put that work in. I didn’t know about that, how … You get the flexibility, that’s the privilege you get, but then you actually have to make flexibility work in such a way where you get what you wanted with the flexibility.
In terms of the time with your family or whatever it is for you, but you also still have to show up with your full ability on your capabilities and your energy for what you need to do for your job. Yeah, that was a whole different ball game than I anticipated.
Luis:
Nice. Yeah, I definitely, I can definitely relate to that because I was, for the longest time as a part-time, I was handling … I was being the editor in chief of a couple of publications. That’s the thing about writers in general and especially since the internet came around, that we’ve mostly worked from home before it was even considered a thing. Yeah, I can definitely relate to the … I was just missing the lingo, some things in trailing. The reality is that this is all new and I’m still learning, learning all the time.
Jamie Power:
Same.
Luis:
I wonder, you are living the digital nomad dream, right? First, you were on the van with your laptop, and then you were in the co-working space with likeminded individuals. To us, this is fine, but I can see that from, you probably know from the employer’s perspective that doesn’t lend itself to building a lot of trusts. You hear that the person is going around in the van or that they live in a situation in a co-working, co-living situation. You kind of think this person is not going to have a dedicated working space. They’re going to be unfocused; there might even be troubles with the internet.
When you’re helping a client hire a person, how do you deal with those fears on the client’s hand? How do you assure them that, “No, the actual candidate is going to be, is going for sure to have a good working condition and to work professionally?”
Jamie Power:
Well, when I worked in Jobcare, most of the people who I was dealing with in terms of companies were not looking to work remotely, because when I was in that space, I was really focused on fulltime employment. Most of my clients, I would get about a thousand new clients a year in Jobcare in terms of a client that is looking for work, dealing with people face-to-face. Then when I worked in Abodoo, obviously it was the complete opposite that you were dealing with companies who were signing up with you, because they were looking to hire remote people. That’s what the platform was about. I dealt a lot with the actual candidates as well, face-to-face.
But by the time I spoke to anyone in that space, they’d already made up their mind. I haven’t had to change a lot of people’s minds in my experience yet. I guess in answer to that question, I can’t actually speak from experience. But when I … If I did have to have that conversation with somebody about trusting, I really do think it comes back to each individual company’s culture. One thing that really changed my mind about how I thought about that, about trust in the workplace was when I heard a friend of my wife’s actually, who had a job of hiring people for the company she works for, it was the part that she least enjoyed about her work was having to hire people.
One of the bits that she mentioned just in passing was that bothered her, was the probation period because she felt that it didn’t line up with their culture of honoring people that, “Hey, we’ve actually decided in an interview, in a long process …” depends on how long your interview process is, “That we actually are taking responsibility for the decision that we made to hire you,” and if it’s not working out, there’ll obviously be reasons why it’s not working out. We should be bringing those up as it comes along. If it still doesn’t work out after we brought those up, then we should have fair grounds to dismiss you. Look, we have to be able to, that’s uncomfortable.
We have to be able to do that uncomfortable thing and have good reasons that were indicators that came up that we were able to point to unfairly say that, this is why. They actually did away with probation periods, because they didn’t feel that it honored people. In essence, that was trust first; it was like, “Hey, we made a choice to hire you. We’re going to start by trusting you. We’re not saying you’ve got three months probation to earn our trust or six months to earn our trust because probation is very much so an indicator of trust or no trust. That was something that changed my mind, my personal view about trust in organizations with new hires.
I really feel that probation is a marker of that. I can’t make any company change their policy on that, but that’s a discussion I would suggest that, that people even have, and just decide actually how much trust do we give people up front? Look, it’s a known … Anecdotally, it’s a known fact that people actually do better when they’re just trusted. Do you agree with that or what do you think about that?
Luis:
I do agree with that thought, I also from experience I have, I do enjoy the probational model when it’s handled respectfully. I do think that there’s a way to handle it respectfully and to be direct from the start. Especially if someone is leaving a stable job, you need to say, “Hey, we have certain targets. These are the targets. You are in a one month or two months or three-month probation or whatever, and you need to hit them.” As long as it’s clear to the person.
Jamie Power:
As long as it’s clear, yeah.
Luis:
And it’s not changed on them. The problem, when the probation period doesn’t honor the person, when things are unclear and they have surprises, the position where you never want to be is that, you reach the end of the probation period, and the person thinks they are going to pass with flying colors and on your end it’s actually no. That means that there was a crucial, critical break in the conversation, in communication, not only some way along the line in a lot of steps along the lines. Actually the way we handle our probation period at DistantJob, at Distantjob we decided that the automatedly, it was better for both people to do it for both ends, for both clients and candidates to have a probation period.
The way we handle it is we have a very strict sheet with goals, about what’s to be … They don’t need to be hard goals. Sometimes they are soft goals, regarding culture, to people’s expectation of how people will conduct themselves in the virtual office, et cetera. Go through that sheet. The direct manager goes through that sheet with the person once a week. Then we have once on a one on one. Then in addition to those, once a month, we actually give them a report on how they’re doing related to the trial, so that probation period. That’s a model that works for me and for us, but it’s not like we don’t trust the people. We do give a lot and we express our trust by giving them, by I giving people a lot of autonomy early on.
If there’s something that I am very allergic to is being on top of people, being looking over people’s shoulders. I prefer the management philosophy of giving a mission and, giving someone a mission and being available to answer their questions if they’re unsure of the steps to accomplish that mission. I think that’s the crucial thing.
Jamie Power:
Yeah. I think that’s really good because even with your model of the weekly check-in there, at least the weekly check-in is not even, it’s not you being on top of them, it’s just your following process. The process is there to follow up on what was in the first place meant to be just a better clarity, which again that’s actually safety for the person who’s working for you. It’s also some level of assurance for you as well, and a way that you can both keep on track together. That’s a really good model.
Luis:
Yeah. Look, it’s not perfect, but you need to roll with the imperfections. There have been times where I have been super busy, I wasn’t able to quality and control and evaluate work properly from some junior team members. I was just straight with them, I was just, “Look, this isn’t going great, but I wasn’t available to give you the feedback that I committed to. We’re prolonging your trial for one month,” and that’s just the way to take responsibility on both ends. After that conversation, the person knows that they need to do better, but they also know that they were respected, that they weren’t, that they were given a chance because I recognized that there was a failure on my end as well.
Jamie Power:
Oh, look, we’re all human and that’s the thing. Even face-to-face when you’re hiring people, there are times when I look back and I know that I thought something like I thought, “Oh wow, this person’s gold does stand,” and then I ended up being like a tenant, but I learned from it. I then was able to recognize that the feeling in my stomach, when it came up again and realized, “Oh, this is from that feeling from the time when I learned my lesson.” That’s just part and parcel, isn’t it?
Luis:
This not to say that there are bad actors. There definitely are bad actors. I felt this. I have experienced with this. That’s actually part of our problem as a recruitment company. I’d be interested in hearing how you deal with that. Part of what we do is, we actually work very hard to make sure we identify the bad actors so our clients don’t get any. Because I’ve definitely been in a position where I went trust first, and some people just go, some remote working people just make it a habit of saying, “Okay, I don’t really care about remote work, but I want some more flexibility in my life for the next three months. I’m just going to take advantage of companies that build trust first.”
That’s sadly a very real experience, and that’s why we at DistantJob we have a very thorough filtering process to make sure that these, that our clients don’t get this kind of people. I’m wondering if you’ve interacted with people, with the opportunists like this and the best, and as a recruiter, how do you detect them and how do you prevent sending them to your clients?
Jamie Power:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ve had a very mixed experience that’s almost like a complete duality with that, where my training ground for that was in Jobcare. The pretext to working in Jobcare was I was working with all unemployed clients. There was no client, sorry, candidates. There were no candidates who were working, but they were just looking around for something else. It was all unemployed and many of who were long-term unemployed, so some people were just a few weeks, a few months unemployed and they had maybe been made redundant from all kinds of levels of corporate jobs or small to medium enterprises.
It was such a broad, dark demographic. But then there were some people who had been long-term unemployed, and that has a very harsh effect on your confidence, and on your motivation levels there are all these kinds of barriers that are invisible barriers that you can’t maybe put your finger on them, but they’re there for motivation. I was aware some times that I was going to really care about a particular candidate’s case and want them to get a job. But then at times, I was going to get let down. I was always managing expectations there. If I was putting somebody forward with a company who I was connected with, I could think of one time I was there dealing with somebody in Specsavers and they were opening a new branch in the city center, and they had lots of roles that they were looking to fill up before they opened.
This was a great opportunity for me to possibly place lots of our candidates. We did actually place a few people, but there was also a few people who I put forwards where I had said to this, to this person who booked a hotel room and everything to a conference room in the hotel, to screen people, I had said, “Such and such amount of people, like 20 something, people are going to show up and only 15 did so.” Five of them let me down. But I had said to them probably, ‘Look, some of these people might not actually show up. I manage their expectations. She knew and I explained, “Look, there are people who would be great to work for you, but when it comes to actually apply for jobs, their confidence is shot to pieces.”
That was my training ground for that kind of thing. Then when I worked with Abodoo, I was very, very specific that this pretext didn’t exist anymore for me it, with the people I was dealing with. If I was managing expectations, I would go even further and try to manage them beneath the bar that I thought I could achieve, so that if I actually, that then when I actually then delivered, they were pleasantly surprised that it turned out even better than I said it would. I would make sure to screen every single person myself very thoroughly, and prepare them as well, give them a fair chance, try and get as much information as I could from the clients what they’re looking for.
But in a nutshell, I really just take; I took little to no risks when it came to that particular situation. Because again, it was a startup company, so we wanted rapport to be really, really positive, but I still had a lot of a great time, yeah dealing with the candidates as well. I turned it around at that point and started monitoring their expectations, but then not turn into actually giving them personal goals in terms of, “Oh, actually, look, I actually wouldn’t be able to put you forward for this.” But my experience from dealing with candidates first in Jobcare meant that I was able to give them a lot of satisfaction.
I was really skilled at actually giving them useful feedback, not vague feedback. They’re so used to getting vague feedback Luis, and sterile feedback that they were pleasantly surprised and there were, and they so rarely got to actually talk to somebody in a call or face-to-face. They’d get like a, just a very vague email. For them to get that, they loved that and just, I would say that to any recruiters who are listing, that you have a real power and a real opportunity to improve somebody’s day, and maybe even improve somebody’s ability to get a job and themselves.
Many candidates are just literally, they have no clue the work that they have to put in to stand out. They really don’t, even though it seems like common sense, and it seems obvious they don’t and recruiters have a power to absolutely turn somebody’s chances around. If you just take, it takes five minutes, you get quick at it, you get so quick because most of, 90% of them you’ll end up giving very, very similar advice to what slightly to each situation. It doesn’t take much time at all, and you end up getting to know your candidates better, and then you know them well enough that they’ll come to your mind without having to go searching your CRM as much.
Luis:
Yeah. That’s absolutely true. I agree with that. Let’s dive a bit deeper into those steps and ways you can help candidates. When you’re hiring people specifically for a remote position, I think we’ve established, just because, for example, when we were talking early in the conversation about the flexibility, you mentioned that that flexibility comes with the burden of self-organization. Let’s see, when you’re hiring people specifically for a remote position, how do you find out, what are the telltale signs of people who actually have this capacity for self discipline and self organization that correlates well with good remote performance?
Jamie Power:
I would say there are some good ways to draw those indicators out. I’d be very specific about, if I was writing a job ad, I would maybe put some action points in there for what kind of information you want to get in the application, and see do they do that? That’s a very small thing, tell us this in your cover letter or try to indicate this in your CV, or ask them to maybe include a brief video and see if they can organize that and if they can outline points. Give them something small to do for you and see how they do it. What that’ll do is obviously look at that will, and you’ve got more information to go through. But maybe let’s say, if you’re using an ATS, you can do that first and then do what I’m talking about, the more f arduous process with the cream of the crop that comes out the other side of your ATS.
I’m not saying you get a thousand applicants, do that with all the 1,000 applicants. I’m saying, do it with the prime ones who come out the other side of the ATS part of the process. It’ll pay off. It’ll pay off because you’ll waste a lot less of your time than you would have otherwise. I think if you leave all your work to an ATS, you’re taking a big chance because you and I probably both know, you guys use Greenhouse, don’t you? II think I saw that on your website.
Luis:
Yeah, yeah, we do.
Jamie Power:
You and I both know, they’re still very crude software. They don’t handle people’s information well, and most people don’t know when I put this graphic in here or when I put it in PDF, or when I lay it out all funky with tables that it’s going to get jumbled up and that I might get overlooked by some
Luis:
I know. ATS is useful and we are actually very, very happy with, very happy with Greenhouse. But at the end of the day, it is the people’s work. It’s the person’s job, right? It’s something that you need, a great recruiter puts in the work and gets in touch and talks to people and evaluates, absolutely. The ATS, it’s not like a great recruiter. It’s just a very good clerk with an ATS, right. It can’t be like that.
Jamie Power:
Absolutely. Even when I was working with Abodoo, sometimes I would look at the ads that new clients would put in into the platform and I would just actually go and actually look in the backend of the system myself, and I would use a few different ways of, methods of searching the database to actually see … I would read between the lines of what they were looking for, and sometimes I’d even give them a call and say, “Hey, can I just get you to clarify this, that this is what you’re looking for? I get a sense that this is what you actually mean by that. Am I right or steering you right here?
Help me understand exactly what your problem is and what kind of person is going to sell that for you.” I’ll just see, I’ll just check and see if there’s any person who hasn’t shown up. There was a bit off, even though the whole point of that platform was that it does it for you, I would do kind of a quality check afterwards, just to see f, is there anyone that it missed and who knows that one person that it missed, that I found using my human means might actually be the answer to their prayers.
Luis:
Absolutely. We use the ATS in our case merely for organizational purposes, because we actually do what you just said as a default. Our client’s job ads never enter the ATS directly. We actually always have a call with them and we come up with a job ad for them. We are in that program just because we find out that it just works so much better when you actually take the care to sit with the client and figure out what their goals, what their culture is like, what their objectives in the hiring out, the hiring, how the applicant is going to work if they are hired. All of this, just allows us …
Having this conversation just allows us to have a much more custom approach and really hone in on what the client needs, rather than just saying, “Okay, we’re going to take your job description, your job ad and we’re going to input that into our system, and then we’re going to see what comes up.” That’s really not … That’s a mass-market way to do it, but it’s not-
Jamie Power:
Totally.
Luis:
The mass market a way to do it is not going to give you exceptional results.
Jamie Power:
Because you never know, for all you’d be looking for like a full stack developer or something like that, and there could be somebody out there who’s a prodigy at that, but a Neanderthal when it comes to doing a CV. Do you know what I mean? Being a pro at your job doesn’t mean you’re a pro at applying for your job. Do you know what I mean?
Luis:
It actually happens more often than you think.
Jamie Power:
There’s ways.
Luis:
Than most people think.
Jamie Power:
Totally, absolutely. Personally, I do think that the onus is o9n the individuals or candidates to define this out and do that work. I often told people to run their CV through jobsscan.co. Did you ever come across that?
Luis:
One of the best web developers I’ve ever met did not even have a CV. He simply did not have one. He never wrote one. He never made one. This was not the thing in his life.
Jamie Power:
Wow.
Luis:
Yeah, exactly.
Jamie Power:
To me, that’s like not having a passport-
Luis:
Exactly.
Jamie Power:
… or a bank card, you know what I mean?
Luis:
Exactly.
Jamie Power:
Or not getting … Yeah, totally. I’m surprised when people don’t have LinkedIn, let alone not have a CV.
Luis:
Yeah, no. He didn’t have a CV, but you know what, when it came to the technical part of it, he was just exceptional. He was just interesting.
Jamie Power:
Wow, there you go.
Luis:
Yeah, exactly. That’s just how the situation is. All right, so we’re nearing the end of the interview and I want to be respectful of your time. I do want to move on to some rapid fire questions. The questions are rapid fire, but the answers don’t need to be so.
Jamie Power:
Sure.
Luis:
Let’s start by what browser tabs do you have open right now? Give me a glimpse into your virtual office.
Jamie Power:
Sure. What I’ve got open right now is, I’ve got Chrome and I’m very particular, right? I like to have shortcuts and tabs on my toolbar, like down the bottom of my screen. I found a way on Windows to set them up as opt-in your Chrome, in your Chrome browser. I’m actually if you do, you can have them with the icon because I want the icon down there, and presumably, windows doesn’t let you pin Chrome stuff down. Anyway, I found a way around that, but I’ve also got Edge, has its new browser come out there. I only just recently just did the Windows update from May, was it may, May 4th or whatever it was that they updated and I did nothing, but Microsoft Edge.
Luis:
Yeah, that’s 10 years in the industry.
Jamie Power:
Totally, totally. I absolutely. When I worked in Jobcare, I’d even go and around people’s computers, I somehow became a go to guy even though it was one of the IT team. I was the go to guy where you see me walking past, “Hey man, can you help me with this?” I’m not even necessarily an IT guy but anyway, somehow got that reputation. I would just like, just remove Edge from people’s short cuts and stuff like that and just not say a word. But I have the new one there and I loved the whole setup process. When I’m in my kind of ribbons that I’ve got tied up there, I have Loom pinned up there. You probably know about Loom.
I also have Jeti. I worked as a data protection officer for nearly two years, so I’m still in touch with some people who I worked with on data protection projects, and a few people have said to me, “No, Jetsi is just great privacy-wise. It’s really up to scratch.” I’ve got that there, so. I also have, so a couple of different video conferencing pieces. I have a mind boisterous, like a mind mapping piece, like a German company, Mirror, have Amazon Music.
Let’s say, I actually need to take that off, because have to keep asking me in my home devices, like they think I have another device on where they can, “Do you want to upgrade your package? Your music is playing on another device.” Yeah, I’ve got a few bits and bobs there.
Luis:
That’s wonderful
Jamie Power:
That’s that green one there.
Luis:
That’s one big virtual office that you have there, but it’s nice. Whatever you need, especially music, music is definitely an essential part of remote working life.
Jamie Power:
Yeah, absolutely. I also have, I have had the same picture on all of my devices for about like seven years now as my background, which is a picture of my local beach that I grew up here nearest to, and I tell my wife and you laughed up there recently, and I set it up as her background, she was livid. She’s like, “I’m sick of that picture. It’s been on every phone you’ve had and every laptop you’ve had for the last seven years. Will, you ever get a new picture?” That’s what I try and keep the actual desktop itself as tidy as possible, so I have that view.
Luis:
Yeah, so you’re into the beach, you’re a surfer?
Jamie Power:
Oh, I wish I was a surfer. I’ve only been surfing a handful of times, but I live on the coast just like a minute from the beach in Wexford where I live and-
Luis:
Yeah, same here.
Jamie Power:
All my friends in Dublin are jealous that they cannot get down to Wexford at the moment with the travel limitations from COVID. I’m appreciating as much as I can getting there for a swim for as many days as.
Luis:
Absolutely. Yeah. I can definitely relate to that. Living by the beach is one of the best perks of working remotely. If you had 100 Euros to spend with each person working for you, what would you give them?
Jamie Power:
Hmm, good question. If I had 100 Euros to spend with each person.
Luis:
You need to give the same thing to everyone. You need to buy in bulk. You can’t just ask them what they want individually and you can’t give them the money either.
Jamie Power:
You can’t give them the money. Well, right now I’d probably just get them maybe a decent quality coffee machine. I’m not even like a coffee nerd or anything like that, but yeah, I’d probably do that get a nice coffee machine.
Luis:
Well, I’m into that. I would like to get a new coffee machine, so that’s a good one. Actually, it’s the first time … I’m surprised it’s the first time someone mentioned coffee. Everyone loves coffee.
Jamie Power:
I’m not even a coffee nerd. I’m actually drinking a cup of instant right now. I think I’ve probably gotten used to instant. Maybe I need somebody to buy me a coffee machine.
Luis:
What about yourself? What purchase has made your life, your work life easier or more productive in the past year?
Jamie Power:
Last year I got a Surface Pro-
Luis:
Nice.
Jamie Power:
… and I really love it, because it’s just a great device. I saw a few people with them and it’s small. I can take it anywhere. I can hook it into other screens and it works through the tablet too.
Luis:
Nice.
Jamie Power:
It’s probably the most efficient device I’ve ever bought just like that. I’ve always bought second rate laptops before, because I would have had laptops provided at work, but I needed something good when I was working with Abodoo. This was a great step up. I had before like an HP Pavilion before that. That was, yeah, that wasn’t going to work.
Luis:
Nice. I hear there’s –
Jamie Power:
I got some Marshall headphones.
Luis:
I’ve been a Mac user for almost for a decade now. I remembered that Surfaces were terrible when they were first introduced, but now I hear very good things about them. I’m curious to try it.
Jamie Power:
Yeah. They’re up to the seven or eight now or something like that. I’ve got a four and it works great. My wife is a Mac person as well. She’s broken two in the last year, but they’re well made. I’ll say that for them. I never got into Apple. Always was an Android and Windows person, but the Mac’s are very well made. They’ll last forever if you don’t break them.
Luis:
Nice. Okay. What about books? What book or books have you gifted the most?
Jamie Power:
Gifted, oh gosh. I gifted the Shack. Well, actually that was a really good one. I haven’t really gifted a lot of books. The most recent book I got was, I gave my wife one written by Cathy Kelly. She’s known She connected with her in business and she likes her as a person and she also likes books. Because I don’t actually read those particular books myself, I can’t ever remember-
Luis:
No, okay.
Jamie Power:
… what it was. I read a very random array of different types of books.
Luis:
What about you, what books have influenced you the most?
Jamie Power:
Oh, influenced me the most. Good one. Probably with all the Black Lives Matter stuff that’s going on right now, my favorite book of all time is probably very relevant, Uncle Tom’s cabin. I like the classics. I like old stuff. Two years ago I started reading Huckleberry Finn and all that stuff, which has a lot of stuff about the Deep South and slavery down there. Then I found in my parents’ attic, I found a load of old hard box, my mother’s parents who were a lot older, they were antique dealers before they passed away. Before I was born, they had passed away, but they had loads of these books. I found Uncle Tom’s cabin. Do you know about that one?
Luis:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s -.
Jamie Power:
Oh, that book, I’m not a very cry kind of person, but I cry, I don’t know how many times, while I read that book, so that was about a year or so ago I read that book. Up until that point, favorite book was Great expectations. I liked Dickens. I’m reading Bleak House at the moment, but I loved Uncle Tom’s cabin and I’m very tempted to read it again.
Luis:
Nice. I’m just jealous that you basically have at your disposal, a treasure trove of antiquities from your grandparents.
Jamie Power:
Totally.
Luis:
Okay, final question. This one has a bit longer set up. Let’s say that you are hosting a dinner, where there’s going to be a round table about remote work and in attendance there are CEOs, hiring executives, decision makers from major tech companies from all around the world. But the twist is that the dinner happens in a Chinese restaurant. You as the host get to pick the message that goes inside the fortune cookie, what is your fortune cookie message for these people?
Jamie Power:
Wash your hands. Just kidding.
Luis:
It’s a good one.
Jamie Power:
Well, they’re in a Chinese restaurant. That’s a really good question. Give me a second.
Luis:
Sure.
Jamie Power:
I’ve got a message for all of these people who are CEOs and it’s the same message for all of them you say, yeah?
Luis:
Yeah.
Jamie Power:
My message would be two pieces. I would encourage them. I’d encourage them because I think that all people who are bosses, employers, and head managers, I think they have a lot on their shoulders and I think they need encouragement. I would encourage them and say, “Hey, you’re doing awesome. The fact that you’re here doing your pitch networking, you’re doing awesome. Keep going.” Then I know, I’d say, “Pass it on. Be excellent to your employees, whether or not they are excellent to you in return.”
Luis:
Well, being excellent to other people is something that they can definitely get behind. That’s a lovely message. All right. Jamie, where can people find you to continue this conversation? Where can they reach out to you and let you know what they thought and talk about these subjects?
Jamie Power:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Please reach out on LinkedIn. I’m totally imploded from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram at the moment. Whether or not that is ongoing or not, I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’m on the fence, but LinkedIn, absolutely LinkedIn.
Luis:
Yeah. Well, we’ll have a link to your LinkedIn profile on this podcast show notes, so yeah.
Jamie Power:
Sure. This is quite correct. Thanks.
Luis:
Hey. Yeah, no problem. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for being a guest
Jamie Power:
Pleasure is all mine. Thanks again. Take care.
Luis:
All right. Ladies and gentlemen, this was Jamie Power in the DistantJob podcast hosted by me Luis and see you next week. We close another episode of the DistantJob podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please, you can help us out by sharing it on social media. That would be great. It’s how we reach more listeners. The more listeners we have, the more awesome guests I can get in touch and convince to participate in these conversations that are a joy to have for me, and I hope they’re a joy for you listen to as well. You can also help a lot leaving reviews on iTunes or your podcast syndication service of choice. Reviews are surprisingly helpful in helping the podcast get to more listeners.
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To help you with that again, distantjob.com is the perfect place to start. You will tell us who you need, and we will make sure that you get the best possible candidate. 20% faster than the industry standard, and with that I bit you adieu. See you next week on the next episode of DistantJob podcast.
