Edson Gebo. SolidWorks Power User Gets Laid Off

We sit down with Edson Gebo, mechanical designer and a veteran SOLIDWORKS power user, who was laid off from a metal additive startup and navigated three hard months of searching to land a new role. We discuss ATSs (applicant tracking systems) that are used almost universally by HR, ageism, networking that works, and the human-first tactics that beat the bots.

• Funding runway, pivot and layoff at a metal AM startup
• Three months of job hunting surprises and setbacks
• ATS filters, degree screens and resume tailoring
• Cost pressure, ageism and the “pliable” hire
• Why engineers must shape engineering software
• Consulting versus full-time tradeoffs and timing
• The short contract that bridged to a new offer
• LinkedIn warm intros and seven interviews won
• Advice for grads on internships and user groups
• Real networking over keyword gaming

“Join me as we talk to some of the most interesting people in the design and engineering software community.”

Transcript

Reunion And Conference Catch‑Up

Roopinder 0:18

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Masters of Technology Happy Hour, where once a week I have a drink with someone I meet in the course of business, but someone I'd like to get to know better as a person. Good to see you. It's been a lot of years. How was it? How was that? I always want to say SolidWorks World.

Edson 0:38

SolidWorks World Well, that was once known as SOLIDWORKS World 3DX World was good. 3DX World.

Speaker 2 0:44

Good. What are you? How many, how many courses this time are you teaching?

Speaker 0:48

I only did one this year.

Speaker 2 0:49

Oh, okay.

Speaker 0:50

I had uh put in the white papers last year, and then unfortunately, as you've seen on LinkedIn, I lost my job. So and then I wondered if I was gonna get back to Worlds, and then I the last midnight hour and the company came and hired me and supported my effort to go to Worlds.

Losing A Job At A Metal AM Startup

Roopinder 1:09

So yeah, I think you've probably been to every every single one.

Edson 1:13

When did the true first one was 2011 in San Antonio?

Roopinder 1:20

Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that one. Yeah, I want to talk more about your job because I was very, you know, I followed you. Of course, I followed you, followed you for a long time, but I followed you on LinkedIn too, and I saw some of what you were going through, but I wanted to talk to you more about that because, well, for one thing, I always thought you were at the top of your profession. Like you were a SolidWorks user and you were the top of your, you know, top of the game, really. You were like a your power user, your system admin.

Edson 1:49

Yep.

Roopinder 1:50

I think you uh did you did you win one of their what do they call them? The solid SolidWorks model mania. Do you ever win one of those?

Edson 1:59

I never won one of those. I've done them a few times.

Speaker 2 2:02

I like it.

Edson 2:04

Yeah, I tried it. I think uh, I mean, I'm I can I'm speedy, but there's a lot more people that are speedier than me. Um, but I definitely have an efficiency that's probably better than most, but yeah, I've never won never won Mortomania.

Roopinder 2:18

Right. Well, the point is though that you were you probably know solarist more than like 99% of the people, right? So and yet what happened there? What you what was the company you're working for? If you could say that, and that's what no, I can yeah, I can share all that.

Three Months On The Market

Edson 2:36

Um, what happened? So the company, beautiful technology, metal additive, and we didn't do desktop printers. These printers were you know the size of an 18-wheeler, they were just a system that was you know 20x of a desktop printer, optical train, that's where all our bread and butter was in our with our optical train, a lot of electronics, a lot of mechanics, a lot of post post-process, or not post-processing, but you know, we had a lot of systems for handling soot and heat and you know, heat exchangers and filtering, you know, when you've got an uh image that's being pounded into uh metal powder at a very volatile rate of energy that creates a lot of spatter and heat, so you have to you have to manage all that. But yeah, so that company, you know, they had a lot of funding. Uh they were running out of runway and they had to pivot. And you know, it's either that or close the doors, which I totally get. And unfortunately, because I wasn't directly correlated to the design of a machine or building it on a shop floor, I didn't make the cuts. There were 80 plus people that were let go.

Roopinder 3:57

How many were mechanical designers or engineers?

Edson 4:00

I never got a full list, I never divulged a full list of who actually got laid off.

Roopinder 4:05

Right.

Edson 4:05

Um, but um I was one of them. And um, I'm not I'm not hurt by it, I'm not sad by it. And it was a business decision, it wasn't a personal decision. I still hope that they can find an end goal somewhere, whether it's with the technology or the company as a whole. But you know, now I have to move on. I have to find employment somewhere else.

Roopinder 4:29

How were they towards you when they let you go? Did you give you notice? Did they give you sevens if you could talk about it?

Edson 4:35

No, it was uh it was a furlough. And so furloughs they can, you know, that can be immediate, and then that turned into a layoff once they figured out where they could pivot and what they had to do to survive. And I, you know, I went through the whole process. So that started in end of September, beginning of October, and then I was laid off. I didn't find work for three months.

Roopinder 5:01

Three months, and you were surprised that it took so long, correct?

ATS Filters And The Resume Wall

Edson 5:06

Supremely surprised because, as you know, industry specific, had my own business for 10 years. Solidworks power user, 25 years strong now. I really I just I think I was more surprised that uh it would take three months, but then I was even more surprised. The hiring process is completely different from the last time I had to do this, which was easily 20 years ago, 25 years ago. Now you're dealing with lots of people looking for a job. Not to say that 25 years ago there wasn't, but maybe maybe you know back then it was a bottleneck of this as opposed to a wider bottleneck, you know, a thousand people trying to get a job in one area as opposed to a hundred people. Because there's such a massive amount of people that are looking for work, companies they're not gonna throw a human to review thousands and thousands of resumes.

Roopinder 6:03

They're gonna use and would you say there were quite a few of like in the Boston area or are specific to our industry or through or through 3D model printing?

Edson 6:15

I can yeah, I can only relate to the area that I'm in. I know other people that were also looking for work that have been probably looking for longer than three months, and they're probably thinking, what are you complaining about? You got a job in three months. I'm still looking, and it's been nine months, right? Um, and that's uh yeah, that's viable. That's completely understandable. Right, Massachusetts, especially in the northeast part, but anything middle Massachusetts up to New Hampshire is very tech driven, extremely tech driven. And I happen to live in this same area that where all this tech is located. So, you know, for three months, not that I'm complaining, but I didn't think it'd take three months.

Roopinder 6:57

Wouldn't you have thought? I would have thought that you know being uh good at SOLIDWORKS would be like a golden ticket, right?

Edson 7:03

You could pretty much walk walk in and yeah, and Roopinder, it's not just SOLIDWORKS too. I'm very business savvy in a sense of part of my business when I had it was to help customers elevate their game. All right, what are we doing wrong? How do we elevate what what can we use with SOLIDWORKS? Should we be using a PLM tool? What's the PLM tool? Should we be using you know connector tools for other things? Should we get SOLIDWORKS electrical? You know, what should we spend money there? So it's not just SOLIDWORKS. You know, I I have a very good forward vision on systems and how to tie those in. Um, did that for Sorop a couple times over. And so you're getting you're getting way more than just a SOLIDWORKS user. You're getting somebody that has owned business 10 years, understands customers, understands systems, can walk into just about any environment, any industry, and go running 100 miles an hour. Any company would love that.

Roopinder 8:05

Yeah, you think so.

Ageism, “Pliable” Hires, And Cost

Edson 8:07

But you got to get beyond the resume. The resume is that integral part. Until you get somebody looking, a physical being looking at a resume, it's not gonna happen. Or if you know somebody that's in a specific company, I did that. You reach out on LinkedIn saying, Hey, I I see you're working at a company ABC. What's the chances you can get me at the front of the line? And I was able to score a few interviews that way. And but I that's what I want. I want that interview. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be way better uh in person than I am on a piece of paper. You know, my personality is going to at least give open up a door that says, you know, this is the kind of person we want with our team. He's very personable, he kind of gets what we're doing. Let's just let's give him a, you know, let's give him a try. At least that's my thought process if I was in that position. But I think the thing that companies are missing or lack of is they use tools, AI tools, and I think they're called ATS tools that uh do all the resume tracking and they're set up to look for certain things on a resume. So there's that part. It's an automated tracking system, I think. It's basically it's a tool that defines a variable, and when a resume comes in, it says, okay, it doesn't have this, doesn't have this, or we're not looking for this or that, throws it out. You're gone. Next. And it's you know, it that's the process today. Humans aren't even looking at a resume. And I get it, if you have a thousand resumes, no one's spending time to look at a thousand resumes. That's just not gonna happen. So between the industry being very uh specific with these type of tools, a lot of people looking for work. Um, until you reach a human, your percentage just dropped probably in half, if not more, on getting a job.

Roopinder 10:04

Yeah, they're making me think that the most qualified candidates are going to be weeded out by this automated by these bots, for lack of a better word, right?

Edson 10:14

I know plenty of people that have a pedigree, and I've only got an associate's degree, I do not have a bachelor's degree. Um, and I know that's probably part of that tool. And you know, do I get kicked out on the street because I don't have a bachelor's degree? If your absolute dead requirement is they have to have a bachelor's degree, hey, great. Um but if it's uh if it's a chance that hell you'll bring somebody in that's very industry specific, been working in the field, maybe the bachelor degree doesn't uh matter as much. Maybe they want maybe the company really needs somebody that's street smart, can come in and help us immediately. There's no spoon feeding, there's no handheld, and he comes in hot, she comes in knowing ready what she wants to do. That person can easily engage, and uh that's the human connection that I think we're missing.

Why Industry Voices Improve Software

Roopinder 11:09

I'm in the San Francisco area, and uh we have Autodesk practically in my neighborhood. Yeah, I've written about them quite a bit as a company that's well in the CAD business predominantly, but they're also a company that doesn't seem to value experience. They've had a lot of people that really know developing CAD and you know the CAD industry. And it seems like the more they know, the more experience they get, the more of a liability they become, right? That they are you know they're expensive for one thing, yeah, right? That maybe they're set in their ways or they don't can't learn new tricks, new tricks being like AI. Do you and and it's like weird because a lot of them seem to have gone to companies. Well, they're laid off. They they've laid off quite a few people recently. And it comes at the heels of last year where they really did a similar, right? And uh, in almost all cases, they were people, well, know quite a few of them. Some of them like live in my neighborhood, they're friends of mine, and they're all like really experienced people. And I thought, wow, this company doesn't value experience, it's it's become a liability to them. Not without it's not without exception, but it seems to be more true than not. I just wonder if that's if you encountered any of that. Like you are, I don't want to say aged out, but that's not true in your case, but age or experience, experience as it relates to or how much money you could be asking for compared to I'll call him a youngster, him or her a youngster. How much factor is that is that ageism is a real thing. Can you tell that from a resume? Maybe, maybe not. It depends. If you've got a resume that only goes back 20 years, perfect. You've got a resume that goes back from when you started working, you know, when you're 18, you're

Edson 13:05

gonna obviously display your age. I don't have a resume like that because I fear that ageism is a real thing. And I have a story to share that's very similar to what you're saying. I applied for a company, startup, in the Massachusetts area, I won't name it. And first line interview with HR. Great. All right, we're gonna get you in front of the product manager. Well, we'll we'll set it up the following week. I get an interview with the product manager, and we have a great conversation. And he is literally jumping out of his chair because you can help your resume speaks volumes. You can help us with a lot of things that we need help with. And I can plug you in here, here, and here. And I go, that's that's my resume. And uh then that's where I my strengths are. I can I can do many things, I can be in you know different capacities and be value add in a lot of different areas. And he was jumping over the moon. I'm gonna forward this back to HR. Let's try to get you another interview with some more maybe executive people. And the time went by, I did the customary check-in. Hey, how's it going? Just wanted to see if there's any feedback. About a week later, I get an email and it says basically, yeah, we're gonna pivot in a different direction for the position. We're really looking for somebody that's uh more junior and more pliable. I'm like, okay, so basically you're telling me I'm too expensive and I'm too old. Pliable.

Speaker 2 14:35

That's a new one.

Speaker 14:36

That was a new one. And I'm sure that was a very polite and politically correct way to say thanks, but no thanks. And I appreciate the feedback. It probably didn't apply. I'm sure they had more of a measure of they went up the chain, more or less, to say, hey, we got this guy. Here he is, he can help us. And they probably instantly went, Yep, he is too old and too expensive. My opinion.

Roopinder 15:02

Now in California, they're not supposed to ask your age. Uh, what is it?

Edson 15:06

Same amount. Okay.

Roopinder 15:07

What about are they allowed to ask you what you're previously making?

Edson 15:11

They I think they can, but you don't have to divulge it. But I've never been asked that. I think only one time in my life have I ever been asked what I was making prior. Um but the conversation, if it ever spins to that, anyways, I don't have a problem talking about it. It's not a big deal to me. I know what my value is, I know what my worth is. I'm gonna tell you what I'm worth. It may not tell you what I made prior, but I'm gonna tell you what I'm worth.

Roopinder 15:37

Right.

Edson 15:37

So, because I think that's more important than the job itself, because you want to be compensated for the years of experience that you have under your belt.

Roopinder 15:46

So I'm glad you found something finally. But did you also look at two other avenues? I would have suggested if I was counseling you, which I'm not a job counselor, but I would have thought, oh my gosh, you could get a job at Solidworks, right? Are they was that ever considered, or is that uh it's been it was considered.

Edson 16:04

I've actually applied for a couple of jobs there prior, um, and didn't didn't get them, but that's fine.

Roopinder 16:10

They know you everybody know they do actually work for level, right?

Local Search, Consulting, And Resellers

Edson 16:13

At the I did two years there as a contractor, they totally know I was in their system. I obviously didn't meet their requirement or whatever they were looking for, and that was years ago. They did contemplate maybe trying the the DASL route one more time, but yeah, just didn't it didn't come into play.

Roopinder 16:32

Yeah, that's that's because there used to be a time out uh this is no secret, but I've not I've not published this, but I think I did I uh oh I think people know I I was also offering a job at SolidWorks at one time. This was oh, I'm gonna say 20 some years ago, back when MacLaney was CEO. You know Johnny Mack.

Edson 16:54

Johnny Mack, yeah.

Roopinder 16:55

And he always gave me the impression that it really valued at that time. I was an AutoCAD, some expert out of right, and he's they really valued anybody who was in the business that would help them learn what the competition was doing, in my case, right? Yep, but they also hired a lot of people in the industry that people were actually real engineers. Macelaney was an engineer, right? Erstick is an engineer, an engineer, yeah. I think Manish now he's even engineered Gian Powell, Dassey was an engineer, engineer, yeah, right? Yeah, yeah, they value that and they value people with lots of time in on their software. Is that not true anymore, do you think?

Edson 17:33

Or do they see I can only re-recite back um to when I was there for the two years, but um I so part of my job was to work on the 3DX platform. Uh so I was working with the PD team, the UX team, some of the programmers, or in conjunction with the PD and UX and the programmers. And I think they still value that. At least they did when I did the two years there. When you can get industry-specific people to help write your software, it's always going to be better software because now you're writing the software as an engineer, not as strictly as a programmer.

Roopinder 18:15

I mean, you can tell by the software. Did a developer write this, or was it an industry person? I mean, exactly. Just obvious to me.

Edson 18:22

Yep.

Roopinder 18:22

Uh, there are certain companies, one of them starts with an A, right? That that have more developers than they have, way more developers than they have users and it the Dasso, or in this case, SolidWorks, really understood the value of what the customer wanted. And they knew the customer was an engineer. So let's hire engineers to collaborate with customers that are engineers, and then we can convey that message to our programmers, and we'll have a better product. And I think it speaks for itself how well that worked out. So I don't think don't think we need to test that any further. Yeah, I always felt like when I was talking to SolidWorks management or SolidWorks executives, like they were one of us. They were uh guys that you know were engineers at some point or some degree. Yeah, maybe they never practice, you know, but they got they got their they knew what they're doing, right? They were they were not they were not just executives or uh you know soft software developers. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, software developers has a lot of lot of they have a lot of skills we don't have. Exactly. I heard it said it's a lot easier to teach a person in the business, either a designer or an engineer, teach them how to program than it is to teach somebody who's a programmer how to be a designer or engineer.

Edson 19:49

Yeah, no, there's some value. There's definitely no, there's definitely some value with that. And and it's a different mindset. Like you've like I've worked with electrical engineers, and of course, being a mechanical engineer, electrical engineers that you know, they think over here, right? Circuits, mechanical engineers, prismatic, turning things.

Roopinder 20:07

Oh, yeah, totally.

Edson 20:09

The the sparky and the gearhead world, the two usually don't mesh. As if I go back to my 80s days of when we used to call electrical people sparkies.

Roopinder 20:18

So you can cross that bridge, Edson.

Contract Gigs And Keeping Momentum

Speaker 20:21

Yeah, um, yes. I actually did I did some PCB design in my life. So I have a I have a respect and a and an understanding of

Edson 20:30

what electrical engineers, you know. I can talk the language a little bit. So a little bit. I wouldn't say I'm electrical engineer by any means.

Roopinder 20:38

Okay, no, but that's for me, it was a uh a chasm, a bridge too far. I couldn't couldn't quite make it. I can't if I can't see it, I don't understand it. I can't see electricity. So I never got that. So I would think that would make you twice as valuable if you can understand both sides of that electromagnetic.

Edson 20:53

Yeah, I do, yeah. I do.

Roopinder 20:56

Yeah. All right. So so okay, but so it's three three months you went and you were like wondering what the heck's going on. And so then what? So you still you're still in the bait in the Boston area, right?

Edson 21:08

Yep, still in the Boston area, just you know, about half an hour, 45 minutes out.

Roopinder 21:13

Confining your search to the Boston area.

Edson 21:15

Yeah, for local jobs, Boston area, specifically trying to keep it under an hour from where I live, which puts me in southern New Hampshire and for the most part anywhere eastern Massachusetts.

Roopinder 21:27

Oh, okay. So what about consulting? Are you did you go think about consulting again?

Edson 21:32

I thought about it. Um, I mean, I closed the business down during COVID or soon there before, soon thereafter, because there was no need to keep something going that I wasn't fully behind, and it was costing me money to keep it registered every year. So and at that time, that's when I had jumped over the back to the corporate world. I was at Keurig. But yeah, I thought about that at some friends that said, maybe go back into consulting again. Know you've got more experience now, and maybe that could be a benefit. And I thought about it, but I'm like, I don't know. It it's um that's a hustle, you know. You you feel and I don't do anything halfway. If I'm gonna do something, it's a hundred and ten percent. I did I was a lot a lot of late nights, a lot of driving, because you're not gonna find customers right in your backyard. You're gonna have to go to location. I just thought, okay, maybe if I don't find something in six months, you know, I'll contemplate that. I was able to land a contract job for about three or four weeks at the end of that three months. It was people I know over, John Galt, one of my friends over there. He he goes, Hey, I got an opportunity for you. It might not be the perfect opportunity, but would you rather be working through the holidays and not collecting an unemployment check? And you we'll get you the best rate we can. You're doing us a favor, we're doing you a favor. What do you think? And I molded over. And he basically after I talked to him for a little bit, he goes, Ed, you're overthinking this. Just take the damn job. That was that was how we sold it, Obby. So so I was able to make a little money there before I transitioned to a full-time job to become the first of the year.

New Role In RF And The 8‑Point Plan

Roopinder 23:14

So it used to be that you could, as a as a consultant, you could make like twice as much because you weren't getting benefits, right? Yeah. Hourly rate, like roughly, roughly 2x times. Yeah.

Speaker 2 23:25

Okay.

Edson 23:26

That would be that would be accurate. Okay. Right. Now, is there a reseller in active reseller in there? There must be, right? Oh, yeah. TriMech, Solid Experts, yeah. Go engineer. They're they're here too.

Roopinder 23:38

They're big, right? They value expert SolidWorks expertise. They have to.

Edson 23:43

Yeah, they do.

Roopinder 23:44

Yeah.

Edson 23:44

Yeah. As a matter of fact, TriMec, I know the people at TriMec very well, uh, both from a corporate standpoint, you know, some of the VPs of the company more on the business side and definitely the user side. Um, and I talked to a few of them about, again, that timetable. Hey, if I don't find something soon, what are the opportunities? TriMek might have something. And there were some people trying to figure out if there was an opportunity, how they could, you know, squeeze me into the process. Where would I fit best? And I said, okay, let's just kind of pump the brakes on that a little bit. I'm gonna keep doing this over here. Uh and then if something doesn't pop, then maybe we talk again. But uh there were people that were willing to help, and I appreciate that.

Roopinder 24:26

But yeah, yeah, there's a sysadmin experience, and you know, uh, I think they that's that's pretty kind of what they do, right?

Edson 24:34

So yeah, integrates systems and uh can I would have loved that, you know, especially if it if they had a startup side, because startup side, they they don't know what they need. And what are you trying to achieve? Let's go through the let's go through the checklist of how we get you operating quickly and how we do that. And uh that would have been daily routine, and I I love that stuff. So yeah, I would have I would have loved that opportunity.

Roopinder 25:00

But in the West Coast, there's a lot of activity for startups, and a lot of them don't know what the heck they're doing when it comes to typically don't are actually making the hardware, they're good at like concepting the hardware, but actually many, you know, design for manufacturing sell that they have no idea how do we get from here to here?

Edson 25:23

We don't know we know what we need here, but we don't know how to get yeah.

Roopinder 25:27

I know most even even the big companies, I've heard like really big companies, you'd be surprised, farm out their design to to design firms, right? Yeah, they don't have their don't you have your own people, I want to say like uh no, no, we have we have played design firms too.

Edson 25:44

I've known plenty of people of that do that business model, you know. They don't have internal teams, they use outside resource, and I think a lot of that is because they want to they'd rather spend the money with outside services than people because there's that's a low entry, right? And there's no commitment there. You can fire a design house, you know, by a phone call. You can't fire people, you know, rightfully, so you can't just fire people because your product's not working. You there has to be a process, so yeah, right, right.

Roopinder 26:13

So okay, all right. So you're happy now? You got your work?

Humans Over Bots: Networking That Works

Edson 26:17

Working at a company in Little Thomas called Diamond Antenna Microwave. We do RF rotary joints, very military, very aviation, some definitely some space stuff, government for sure, some commercial applications. And they they recently got bought by a private equity company. Matter of fact, the ink went dry the sometime, I think, the end of last year. And the mission statement was we want to grow the company, and we want to grow the company from this, you know, to this. So when I interviewed with my boss, gave him the same pitch that I give everyone else, and you know, had a round of interview with HR. And on my way home, I said, you know, I'm gonna elevate my game here a little bit. I put together a eight-point bulletin with multi, you know, with uh with some side bullets uh attached to that. In the two or three hours of having an interview with him and going through the building, I noticed areas that they were lacking or things that they needed, or things that we were talking about that, hey, this is really where you should be looking at, what you should be looking at. And I sent them that as a hey, it

Roopinder 27:25

was great interviewing with you today. Thanks for your time. By the way, here's eight bullet points, and I'm not trying to be pushy. Think of this as just a me with my business, this is what I used to do, and you can use this as free consulting. And he replied an email the next day afterwards, and he said, You'll be having an offer in the in the mail coming to you within the next two days. What you sent was spot on and perfect. So, and I've done that with other companies that where I could see where they were needed, you know, some gaps filled in areas of you know how they could use some help. Um, but he actually read it and he understood it and he respected it. So that sealed the deal. It took a human, RuPender. It took a human.

Edson 28:17

It did.

Roopinder 28:18

I know, and it's a shame humans are so hard to reach. You know, I think I think in all fairness, part of the problem is that applicants are you know just sending out tons and tons of resumes and offer letters because AI makes that so easy right now. Automated, you know, they're not automating to the same extent that the employers are, but they also are oh yeah, yeah.

Edson 28:44

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 28:45

I've heard people put out thousands and thousands of I can share a little bit of a story about that if you want to hear it. Yes, please.

Tailoring Resumes For ATS Reality

Edson 28:52

So um one of my friends that was also laid off from a sitter out, they uh they say, Hey, I have a recruiter friend of mine, and you know, I think she would help you a lot, you know, she even if it's just on the LinkedIn side. And I said, Great, I'll take advice anywhere at this point. So he, you know, made some arrangements. We did a virtual call. I sent her my resume just as it was. So we got on the call, super great. She actually knew Dassault people. I think she actually worked at Dassao for a little while. She's doing her own thing. Um, and she was basically telling me, Your resume is great, but here's the problem there's no vertical integration with it, and you're not your resume is probably not uh forward thinking to the position that you're applying for. And I said, Why would I change my resume to tell somebody that I'm more this than this? And I get the maybe specific to the job, but the resume, that's me. That's me. That the resume, that's who I am. That's like telling the chef, hey, you can only make uh brisket when you cook your meat, you can't use chuck or top round or something, right? And that that's kind of where my brain goes. And she goes, I get it, I understand. You're well versed, but you want that to be the conversation when you get in the door. Companies like that vertical integration, because now they know you're you're focused on the position and it's more aligned for what they're looking for. And I said, Okay, I get it. She goes, try it. Uh see if it works. And I did. I don't know if it uh got me any more attention or any less attention, but I felt like I was just uh shorting myself because my background is very reversed. But she did help me with my LinkedIn with adjusting some things for visual purposes and in you know how people view my LinkedIn and what the information is available there. But I just I just kind of thought it was a little bit counterintuitive to uh change my resume for every application. I told her, I said, I'd have over 200 different resumes if that was the case. She she she was she laughed as she went, Okay, I get that. But yeah, that's kind of where the industry's at. And I'm just like, okay. And I think she meant that in a respect to because she we did talk about those ATS tools, those those a lot of those companies use those tools, so that's the kind of resume those ATS tools are looking for.

Roopinder 31:28

But it's like they have so many check boxes that need to be checked, and unless you just if you just go across the board, if you're wide, you only get a few of them, and the person who's tailoring it, tailoring it, you know, you just asked, say chat GPT, make me a cover letter in a resume for this position. I'm sure you do much better with the bots, right? It won't be you, it won't be you. It'll be something that chat bottles invested.

Edson 31:55

That's not me at that point, and that was that's the part that was killing me. I've been I've been working for 40 years in multiple different industries, and I have all this experience. I just feel like that's so limiting, but I get it. That's you you get the interview, and then you tell them all the different experiences you got. But I guess you got to get the interview first, but you still need a human. You still need a human.

Roopinder 32:21

You gotta get past those, all those bots and automations and get to a human being, and then and then who knows by no by then. I think most of them have probably been playing this game for so long. This automation, this you know, hit all the check boxes, they've been hitting playing that game so long, they may not know a value of a person if they if they stumbled across it. So this beer, we're we're painting a rather gloomy picture of the jobs job search at the moment. It's like if you game this, if you know how to game the system, you'll get the job, it seems. Yeah, how would you advise to somebody who's I don't know setting a position? I'm still gonna lean on the fact that if you have experience and you're bringing something to the table, a company should be able to recognize that. What they do, that's their expertise. And if they see something that they need, they're gonna go after it. But because all these bots and and you know other type of AI tools, you got to get past that. That's a hurdle. In my opinion, that's a hurdle. I know it's helping the company hiring, I get that, but it's hurting the true applicant, you know, the one that's like, why is this company not calling me? I do I've done this stuff at other companies, but it's it's a it's of such a narrow opportunity because of the way companies are approaching it. And yeah, you're right, they're missing out on golden candidates that could easily help them. And I I don't know any way around that except to say that until a human looks at it, you're probably not gonna make it.

Advice For Job Seekers And Grads

Edson 34:01

Yeah, you had mentioned like going in through LinkedIn and help and you know, saying, I think you said put people, can you put me at the head of the line or something like that? That's still pretty good tactic. It worked for me seven times. Okay, yeah, I got seven interviews, so multiple interviews included, uh, at a several different companies because I knew somebody that worked there. I think I think there was only one or maybe two companies that I got interviews at that I didn't know anybody, but a human actually looked at my resume. One of them was Aris Corporation, which is in Andover, Massachusetts. And I'm like, okay, you know, I I'm gonna I saw the you know the job description. I said, you know, I'll throw a resume on that. I understand the PLM side, I'm very adept at the PLM side. I actually love the Aris product. We tried to bring it into Surat and got to know some of the people that to sell it through TriMek and also, you know, people at Andover at corporate. So I'm like, okay, let me just throw a resume on it. It's a big company, they're probably not gonna know my name. Put it in, put the application in, and HR, somebody from HR got back to me like two or three days later, and she was telling me, Hey, we got your resume here, but we're reviewing it, but we really think you'd be better suited for this position that we just posted, I think it was like today or the day before. And I thought to myself, wait a minute, you actually looked at my resume? And she's she's like, Yeah, I'm like, yeah. I'm like, okay, great. That that's what we need. That's what we need. Here is a company, another very good one, been around for a long time, actually looking at resumes with a human eyeballs and a you know, feel good touch, and suggesting that I apply for this position. They conveniently threw my application over to there. I got five interviews out of it. It didn't end up going anywhere, but I got five interviews out of it, and I was like, okay, but again, human interaction, not uh not a tool.

Roopinder 36:06

I think that is that is the lesson to be learned here. Yeah, that that uh yeah, talk, talk, get past those bots, get to the humans. You know, if you have friends, if you have acquaintances, yeah, people definitely refer to you that say, you know, that say basically good person knows what they're doing, reliable. I think all those skills that they don't come across in a in a in a when you're doing a keyword keyword matching, right?

Edson 36:32

They just don't you're never gonna know somebody by a resume. A resume is a door opener, that's all it is. Yeah, I told my daughter that who's struggling down in Brooklyn, New York, who just graduated from university a couple years ago. Your resume needs to be a door opener, but you as a human need to shine when you get the when somebody gives you the opportunity, Brooke. You it's like you're putting a ball on a T and you're just hitting it out of the park. You make the most you can out of it. You be you be you and let the rest just fall where where it may.

Roopinder 37:03

So I imagine the family was quite relieved when that you could you got the position to your new position.

Edson 37:10

Yes, yeah, my brand new wife has a September included. Well, congratulations, I guess. Thank you. Thank you.

Roopinder 37:18

Well, it's it's it's been great. I really appreciate you your candor and your willingness to talk about your ordeal, if I could call it that. I find most people don't want to talk about it. Uh, I don't know why. I'm really thinking that it would, like I said, about the wave of layoffs with autodeskers. It's amazing to me how they don't share what they're really feeling. But I think they're really feeling they just think, oh, I understand what happened to me. I'll keep looking month after month after and sometimes year after year. They can't find a similar position, but they don't they don't want to talk about what they've gone through. So really thanks for doing that. I think this will be very helpful to people that go through a similar situation. That there is there is hope. They need to get through that get through that bot barricade.

Edson 38:10

Yes, people people just need to know that they're awesome, and it's not you, it's how the system works, you know, and you just keep being awesome, eventually you'll get your chance. Somebody will give you a shot.

Roopinder 38:23

Well, you mentioned you had a daughter. This may be my last question, I'll let you go. Uh it's probably what? Oh, you're it's seven o'clock for you, isn't it? That's fine.

Edson 38:32

I'm keeping it totally funny.

Speaker 38:34

Good, Roopinder. It's all good.

Roopinder 38:35

You had now you have a daughter, you have other other children?

Edson 38:38

Nope, just one.

Roopinder 38:40

Okay, how would you advise young people now is in terms of getting into a similar profession or a similar trade as you've been experienced is interning is is a key good gateway to you know a job or at least experience, right?

User Groups, Real Networking, And Community

Edson 38:56

You you need experience. Companies, especially in you know more technical aspect, they want to know you have some experience. So when they know you're not gonna come in with a breadth of experience, you know, that you're gonna be very limited, you're gonna be spoon-fed, but try to get as much experience as you can. You might if you do get a job opportunity, and it might not be the best fit, you might have to take it. No one ever said you have to stay there. If you can, you know, stay a year at a minimum, maybe two years, learn what you can, offer the most, get as much back, you know, with what you what you offer, and then you move on. It's all about experience, trying to see different views from different different desks and working with different people. I think you know, there's something to be said with people that stay at a company for 30 plus years. I love that. I worked at a company called Healed Machine, it was a division of Cincinnati Milicron. We had a service board. That service board was huge, rependa. It was probably like three feet by three feet, it was monstrous. And it had the most years person, which was around 60 to the least, which was five years, and five, ten, fifteen, twenty. And I used to love seeing that. Unfortunately, I don't think that's too much of a thing anymore. Yeah, yeah, I gotta say it's worse out here. I was on the east coast for a long time and I worked with companies that similar, how should I say, that place similar value on long terms of service uh experience? It it doesn't seem to exist here on the West Coast, it's like they yeah, they just don't that they don't get the gold watch. No, they don't get like they don't think you're special. No, I don't I don't want to say there's no value in it. I think there's still value depending on the company, but from my perspective, I've learned if I would have stayed at my first job doing what uh you know, any kind of engineering or design, I probably would have learned a of uh this, you know, a sixteenth of what I've learned out of the many years of going to different jobs and then obviously starting my own business. There's value in it. There's an and that's that's what companies want. They want experience, they want value. So anybody younger, you know, you just you got to take an opportunity, you got to take a take a shot at networking, networking, user groups. User groups are a great opportunity for somebody fresh out of school. I know I still run the one here in Massachusetts. Well, called Merrima called Merrimack Valley now, but kind of rebranded a little bit. But I remember there are bigger user groups. Yeah, user groups, great place to network. Oh, there should be more people in that 20 age bracket coming to user groups. Um, I always like to do the how many years thing, you know, how many years you've been using SOLIDWORKS. And I always tell the the the 20-something person and the five years or less person, those are the two people that should be connecting and talking to each other. Not only from a SOLIWWORKS perspective, but also from an experience perspective.

Roopinder 42:06

This time I'm sure it'll I promise it'll be a last question. It's okay, Rip and you find it hard to get the youngsters into the I'll call it young people into the user groups because they're all like, you know, they Google this and they YouTube that, and they don't know if they ever need to talk to a live person. You it's hard, right?

Closing Thoughts And Next Year’s Plans

Edson 42:25

Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, they grew up with a different mindset of networking, maybe. I don't know. Um I'm I'm still from the old school where dad said, Hey, get get your butt out there, you know, you know, get get put the turn the TV off and get your butt out there. Um kids today, they're born with technology. I wasn't born with technology. I didn't have a cell phone until I was in my 30s, didn't have you know a PC until I was probably in my you know early 20s. I wasn't born with this technology, so I adapted pretty quick, which is great. But kids today, my daughter, she had a cell phone, I think, when she was maybe 12, 13. You know, so I mean, but I also think it teaches them bad habits in the sense of human interaction, because they think human interaction is well, I was on you know LinkedIn or not LinkedIn, but maybe TikTok or or uh what's some of the other ones I can't even think of Snapchat? I think that's one of them that they use, right? I was on Snapchat talking to somebody. That's not the same.

Roopinder 43:31

Oh no, texting and Snapchat and Instagram and yeah, yeah.

Edson 43:38

Human interaction at that age is a totally different thing to our age. Yeah, you know. Um, and I know we have this capability today, especially to do these uh bid calls, you know. I and that's that's great. This is still human interaction. I may not be in the same room as you, but I'm at least I can see your body language, I can see your facial expression.

Roopinder 43:58

It's it's a it's yeah. It's a good I think it's uh turned out to be a good thing the zooms in, but there's nothing like having a beer with somebody after the after you know after a class or a session or you know, even after what the end of a you a Solidworks world or whatever it's called a camaraderie. That's really hard to get.

Edson 44:19

You're talking my language, Roopinder. You're preaching to the choir all day long.

Roopinder 44:23

Keep it up, keep up the good work. Edson, I'll be happy to see you. Hopefully, I'll make it to the next one.

Edson 44:31

Nashville next year.

Roopinder 44:31

So Nashville, okay, back to Nashville.

Edson 44:34

Very, very fun place, a lot of energy, and it'll be most likely a good time for everyone.

Speaker 2 44:40

You got a year to get ready.

Speaker 44:42

That's right.

Edson 44:45

See you, Roopinder. Okay, see you. Have a good evening. You too. Bye bye.

Speaker 1 44:49

And that concludes this episode of the Masters of Technology Happy Hour. I hope you enjoyed our chat and will join me as we talk to some of the most interesting people in the design and engineering software community.