The Hiring Edge

Certs Didn't Matter - Learn This to Land Your Dream Job

• Josh Matthews • Season 3 • Episode 78

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In this episode of The Hiring Edge, host Josh Matthews brings on Salesforce architect and founder of the People First Method, Jon Cline. This isn’t your typical tech talk — Jon breaks down how soft skills like empathy, communication, and collaboration are the real power plays in the tech world.

He shares a powerful transformation story of Serena, a military spouse who went from jobless and discouraged to landing a major role and leading projects — all by shifting how she showed up in interviews and on teams.

They unpack:

  • Why most tech projects fail (and it’s not about the tech).
  • The mindset shift that drives career breakthroughs.
  • How simple tools like process diagrams can become leadership assets.
  • Why “go-givers” win long term over “go-getters.”

🚨 LIMITED OFFER: Use code shared in the podcast at PeopleFirstMethod.com to get 50% OFF the next cohort — only 12 spots available. Starts in September.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Hiring Edge, the podcast helping leaders navigate the age of AI, create teams that thrive and build a workplace people never want to leave. I'm your host, josh Matthews. Today we have John Klein. John Klein is a friend. He's also an incredibly gifted Salesforce architect and he is the founder of People First Method, and some of you who've been tracking the show for at least the last eight or nine months will know that we had an amazing giveaway last year. John donated $60,000 worth of free education and leadership training to an entire cohort of what was then called the Salesforce Career Show and what you now know as the Hiring Edge. Why don't you talk for a moment about People First Method? What's the 20-second breakdown of what you guys do over there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thanks so much for the opportunity. It's been such a great experience walking this journey with these 12 people. In a nutshell, we help turn soft skills into hard money for tech professionals. Most people lead with tech certifications. We recognize the top three reasons why projects fail are all non-technical in nature, so we want to help people have more success. More promotions, more growth.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you can share what were some of the results for this cohort.

Speaker 2:

What I loved about this cohort and it's really just representative of your audience is it was a really good spectrum, a really diverse set of people, a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of different experience. Everything from one to two years experience all the way up to 12 plus years experience. A lot of different backgrounds. We had people from the UK, from Canada, from India, from the US, across all three time zones. Really great to see the level of diversity that's in your audience and that we were able to serve.

Speaker 1:

Can we talk about our friend who hadn't worked for two years and suddenly found herself in an incredible role with a New York-based company?

Speaker 2:

Essentially, when we began with Serena at the beginning, she was really struggling with confidence and I'm not saying anything that she wouldn't say herself. If you go to her LinkedIn profile, she's already mentioned all of this. Every week she actually posts. So for her she really had some challenges with confidence because she had applied to many, many I think upwards of 50 different roles over the many months and it's so difficult to be ghosted, to figure out like what am I going to do, how to stay motivated? And certainly she's also a military family, so she's got other stresses, so she's got other stresses. It was amazing to see her, week after week, just invest and become more and more confident, have poise. And really what she mentioned is, even as she went in to do these interviews on these new positions, the whole vernacular and focus of what it was that she was going to talk about. She wasn't going to go through and mention all of the checklist items from a particular technical project, the things that she highlighted and she said I'm going to go in, I'm going to talk about empathy and I'm going to talk about enlisting others in the solutions that I drive and I'm going to talk about how to resolve conflict and avoid those massive risk factors that impact project success. She had a totally different talk track when she was entering those interviews and it really just reflected in a revised and refined really a vantage point, a whole perspective about what is a project and how do we measure success.

Speaker 2:

Well, and I think one attribute that she demonstrates well is she's a go-giver. A lot of people they feel that they need to be go-getters, which sometimes can be a net loss to other people, but she's a go-giver Even in our cohorts. Every week she would be the first one to post on Slack to say, hey, here's our reflection questions for the week. Here are my answers. Let's process these together. Let's maximize our benefit from this as a cohort together. On the calls, she's encouraging people. She's creating an environment where people can be vulnerable and transparent about the ruts that are holding them back in their professional careers. So no doubt she would go into this. And now, from what I understand, we just ended our cohort last week and she was highlighted that she's become a leader within her organization. She's now taken on multiple projects and being relied on and depended on in this organization to do really extraordinary things, and it's just wonderful to see how she's been able to really stand up firm, strong and confident in this role and really level up in her career.

Speaker 1:

So I'm kind of curious when you think about the people in the cohort who have achieved the most out of the system, the most out of the program. What are the qualities that people walked in the door with that helped them to be the top two, top three, top four people in the whole cohort or get the most out of it? Maybe you can share that real quick.

Speaker 2:

That's a good question. Get the most out of it. Maybe you can share that real quick. That's a good question. First, I think what we highlighted with Serena, that others also exhibited, is that sense of I'm here to make an investment, I'm here to give something that is going to reciprocate and give me something back, that there's not a sense that I'm here to just be a consumer. I'm going to wait until the dish is served to me and then I'll eat it, and if it's late or it's not coming, I'm just going to sit here and wait, but rather I'm going to participate and make sure that my questions get answered, that I'm engaging other people, that I'm doing my best to provide the highest value, the highest presence, the best kind of mindful engagement I can in this process and give it requisite time, because changing our behavior is really hard. It's not like binging trailhead and just having something to memorize or to refer to later.

Speaker 1:

What level of engagement are people taking from the course and from this training and actually utilizing it and applying it in their regular lives.

Speaker 2:

They're slowly changing over time in this kind of peer environment, I think very quickly people realized that they were in new territory, that they were in kind of uncharted waters and though they may have heard, for example, some of the terminology that we're talking about for example, who hasn't heard of a process diagram? But we take something that seems ordinary like a process diagram, and through that people-first vision we turn it into something extraordinary as a recon device, as an ability to align and motivate people towards a particular direction. We show them how to use ordinary tools, much like one is going to use an ordinary pickaxe in the right way to mine gold. It's not the pickaxe that discovers the gold right, it's the person who recognizes how to use a simple tool in an extraordinary way. So they realized this very soon and I think that was very motivating. It created an appetite that they knew, no matter what we were going to discuss.

Speaker 2:

Something is seemingly mundane, like a test plan, for example, or a deployment plan. We go over these aspects as ways of communicating value and demonstrating it and making it visible to the client right, ensuring that there's no risk if you happen to move away or it can't work on the project next week. You're ensuring that the show will go on. There's all these other benefits that people recognized weren't things that they were thinking of or had actually ever heard about.

Speaker 1:

So everybody, john has a code for you If you want to get 50% off of the People First Method for the next cohort it starts in September. That's $2,400 off the entire course. This is only available to the first 12 people who sign up. That sign up code is HiringEdge, so you'll see on PeopleFirstMethodcom when you go to register you can just enter in HiringEdge. You'll get half off and some incredible results. You've had 12, 14 people go through the last cohort. I was able to place two of them and I didn't even know that they were part of the cohort at the time because I'm terrible with names, as most of you guys know. John, I can't thank you enough for being on the show. You're always welcome here. What you do over at People First Method is nothing short of absolutely incredible. You are one of the most unique, high EQ people I've ever met in my life. You are so appreciated in this ecosystem and certainly appreciated by me and by my audience. Thanks so much for being here.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure, so glad to help, and thanks for the opportunity.

People on this episode

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Josh Matthews

Host
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Vanessa Grant

Co-host