The Truth About Job Hunting Today, with guest Nicki Perchik

Two generations, one conversation… well, almost.

This week, it’s just Shane - because Jenna is officially in graduation chaos mode (finals, celebrations, moving to NYC… all of it). But the timing couldn’t be more perfect for this conversation.

Shane sits down with recruiter, career coach, and author Nicki Perchik to talk about what’s actually happening in today’s job market - and what Gen Z (and honestly, all of us) are getting wrong about getting hired.

Nicki has spent years helping companies hire top talent and coaching professionals at every level. And lately, she’s been working closely with college students and recent grads navigating that frustrating “you need experience to get experience” cycle. 

This episode is packed with straight talk and practical advice—no fluff.

What we cover:

•  Why the job market isn’t as hopeless as it feels (and what to do instead of panicking) 
•  The biggest mistakes candidates make in interviews (this one is big) 
•  Why networking still beats everything else—yes, still 
•  What actually matters more than your degree 
•  How to stand out when you have little to no experience 
•  The truth about your first job (and why it’s not supposed to be perfect) 
•  How social media can quietly cost you a job offer 
•  The skills that will matter most in an AI-driven world 

Nicki also shares what she tells her own kids—and it’s the kind of advice every parent and graduating senior needs to hear right now.

If you have a college student, a recent grad, or you’re navigating your own career shift, this is one to send, save, and come back to.

🔗 Connect with Nicki

📘 Book: The Recruiter’s Truly Simple Guide to Job Searching, Interviewing & Getting Hired
👉 https://www.amazon.com/Recruiters-Truly-Simple-Searching-Interviewing/dp/B0D48193JB

📧 Email: nikki@thenlpgroup.net

 🌐 Company: The NLP Group (Executive Search + Career Coaching)

Looking to up your social media marketing efforts? Reach out to Big Voice Social at bigvoicesocial.com 

Need help with your company's social media? Reach out at bigvoicesocial.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Everyone tells you you need more experience, but to get the experience, you need the experience. And it's this endless cycle. I'm constantly telling younger, and actually I tell a lot of more seasoned professionals this as well. But it's doesn't, it doesn't matter exactly where your degree is from if you can't communicate successfully and solve problems and show hustle.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Welcome to the Social Dialogue Podcast. We're a mother-daughter team, both working in the world of social media management.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Join us as we share our different perspectives on life today, including trends, fashion, friendships, and career, and how social media impacts it all. Together, we bring two perspectives to one conversation. I'm Shane and I'm Jenna.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

And we're excited to bring you this new episode of the Social Dialogue Podcast. So hi everybody. If you went to Indiana or you know anything about Indiana, you know that she will be at a bar or a party every single night this week. She's completely crazed. Then she's got final projects, finals, graduation pictures, and graduation is coming. And then a week later, she's moving to New York. So it's a little insane. So she is taking a little bit of a hiatus. So we're gonna do a few episodes without Jenna, which is fine. But our guest today does know Jenna because she had a conversation with her. So I'm gonna introduce you, Nikki, really quickly, and then we'll get into it. So Nikki Perchuk is a business founder, two-time author, wife, and mother to two young men, 18 and 20 years old. In 2008, Nikki founded an executive search firm months before the bottom fell out of the market, and it felt like the sky was falling. So Nikki is familiar with tough job markets and has helped thousands of professionals at all levels across all industries navigate every kind of market. In addition, she's helped hundreds of companies hire top talent in pretty much every functional area at nearly all levels. While her firm has historically worked on roles more mid to senior level, due to the ages of her boys and her friends' kids, her job search and interview coaching and consulting business has exploded in that younger age range, like Jenna, where she's spending a lot of time coaching college-age professionals.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Nikki, welcome to the Social Dialogue Podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here and honored to be asked. And as an IU alum, I can appreciate Little Five Week. Huh? So fun. You're absolutely right. She's having a blast. And oh my gosh, she's graduating. That went fast, I'm sure. Yeah, it did.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

It went faster than high school did. I think because high school had so many issues and drama and projects and all this. And I was involved in it. Whereas once she went to college, right? I didn't know when she had projects or tests or whatever. So it just it kind of flew by. But she's in a really good place. I know you've had a conversation with her. She um she is moving to New York and she's working on that next step. So she'll get there soon.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

She is gonna be great. Nothing to worry about, mom. She's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah, I'm sure. So, Nikki, tell us a little bit just what a recruiter does. I know this industry has been around a long time. In fact, I used a recruiter at one point when I lived in New York and was having trouble landing a position that I felt like was gonna be a good fit. So I worked with someone. But for the people who have never worked with a recruiter before, I guess is it still called headhunting at all? Or is that passe? So tell everyone kind of like what your career is, what you do, how you get paid, and how it kind of works.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Such a great question. And it's something that a lot of people don't understand. And quite frankly, I didn't fully understand it until I really got into this world. So there's two types of recruiters, and there's the type that I am and my firm is is really the traditional style of recruiting, which means we're hired by companies to help fill specific roles. So let's say United Airlines calls and hey, can you help us find a VP of marketing? So we figure out all of the ins and outs of the role, what they're looking for, and then we go and find candidates that we interview, vet according to what they're looking for, put together a slate of candidates that we present, and then we help companies really holding their hands as well as the professionals' hands going through the process until ultimately they make a hiring decision. So we're paid by companies, we spend 24-7, 365 looking for the right talent. On the other side, and this is really kind of a much less common type of recruiter, is more like a coach, an advisor, someone who is paid by the professional to help them, the professional, find the right job opportunities and land a role. So that person is paid by the professional. And it can be very expensive when you're doing that because when you think about it, that it's hard to take someone from start to finish through a job search process because there's so many opportunities, there's so much to look for and find. Again, more often than not, a recruiter is paid by a company.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

You're mostly working with people at higher levels. You're not so much working with people at, you know, like a gender's level who are doing that. But it does sound like you're doing some coaching of people at that level. Yes. What can you tell us about good advice you have for people who are graduating college that don't have a job yet? Graduation's coming. But then also just in general, what's the job market like right now at those entry levels? Because anecdotally, what I have heard, um, I have a friend in the advertising industry who has a master's degree. She has been out on her own as a, you know, she has her own little graphic design shop, and she's looking to go back into corporate America. What she says is that people at her level are applying to jobs at Jenna's level, which leaves people at Jenna's level applying to internships or unpaid opportunities, which is really hard to swallow. So I'd love to hear like that's only one anecdote. So I'm I'd love to hear, like, you know, your take on all of that.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Okay, so a couple things. So, first of all, yes, we spend a tremendous amount of time coaching professionals because so many people come to us every day asking for our advice and counsel. And again, as I mentioned, we're hired by companies to fill rules. So we have a second side to our business, which is that professional coaching. Okay. So, and and I actually wrote a book to try and help people because a lot of people can't afford to pay for a coach or don't want to pay for a coach. So I wrote this book to try and give people the ins and outs of the to-dos, what not to do. There's so many common sense mistakes people make when job searching, because most of us don't do it all day, every day. And honestly, this is the book I wish I had when I was first starting out. And really, it's valuable to all level of professionals because we don't necessarily know from the other side of the desk what people are thinking about. Okay. So there's a lot of easy things that we can fix when we're in job search mode or interviewing mode to make our lives a lot easier and help us avoid some of the uh heartache that comes with and the stress that comes with job searching. So, taking a step back to your question about Gen Z, people entering the job market. So there are so many things I could literally do like a hundred episodes with you, but I'll try and keep it a little brief here. So, first and foremost, I think A, we all have to understand every job market is hard. Right now, there is this constant drumbeat of this is the worst market ever, there are no jobs. And frankly, it's not true. So I want people to change their attitude a little bit and understand every market has challenges. Every market is uniquely difficult. This one certainly has challenges. That's not fake. Um, but we have to recognize there's plenty of jobs, there's lots of hiring. Okay. What can we do when our kids are in college, when college kids come to me? So, first of all, I recommend before you even get to that senior level, when you're entering college, these are things you want to think about. So, Shane, you and I both have sons who are freshmen, both of Florida. There are a ton of clubs. A big thing for us was Zach, you got to get into some clubs. Like right out of the gate, you got to get involved. And the more you can get involved, the more you can help yourself be set up for success, not only because of what you might learn in a club and the access you have to certain people, but it's really beyond that. There networking is everything, right? And so if you're in a club and you have guest speakers, or if you can be the one to line up the guest speakers, now that's a cool idea, right? Yeah, yeah. So get involved in clubs, get involved at a level that isn't just I'm showing up to a meeting just so I can tell my parents I'm in this club and I went to the meeting. Like be part of the decision making of who's coming into the club. If the club doesn't have a lot of external speakers, get some. Work with administration. So getting involved, important. Number two, get a job at the alumni office. Even if it's just a couple hours a week. If you have access to people, networking is everything. If you can start having conversations with alumni sooner, it's not only gonna help you have those contacts, but it might help you learn more about what path do I want to go down, right? Things like trying to get involved in summers or in breaks in what I call mini internships. So for example, my boys are both in business majors. So they have spent shadow days with various people we know over summers to learn like, okay, this is what a financial planner does. This is what a CFO does. This is what someone who does business analytics does. And so having these like mini days that someone who maybe people in your network for your kids can create these, it's things that they can start to talk about as they create their resumes, right? Getting internships sooner than later. Listen, I feel terrible that kids have to be so focused on this so early in the sense that you and I are similar age. Like we got to have some fun summers. Yeah. They don't really get to do it the way we did it. They have to be more involved, they have to be more mindful, but learning to have those networking conversations, getting those shadow days, and then getting real internships sooner than later, taking advantage of the career center, making sure that you really are meeting with these people. I cannot tell you how many parents have their kids come to me. And when I start asking questions, they know they have access to this or that, but they haven't really done it. And their parents don't really know. So don't tell their parents. But so there's so many tools that are available that they might not realize that they have. Okay, so these are some things to be thinking about. Recognizing that having a good resume is so important, and the quality or lack thereof of what I see coming out of whether it's a junior or senior's, you know, their resumes are lacking. And so having your kids, parents, this is a PSA, having your kids working with someone. We all spend all this money on coaches for our kids, right? We spend money in sports and voice lessons and theater, um, ACT, SAT. We spend all this money to get kids into great schools to go to these great schools, but the schools don't do everything. And so investing in getting help with writing that resume is so important. I can't tell you how many typos I see. So these are some basic things, but is this helping, Shane, get Yeah, you know, and a couple things.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

I think the shadow that you were talking about, the other reason that's so important is because what if someone goes to college and they're like, I want to be a business analyst, but they don't really know what that is. And then they shadow and they're like, Well, this isn't, I don't want to do this. Totally. So then you can make a change, you can make a shift before you've gotten this degree and maybe even gone on to get an MBA. And then you're like, I don't actually like this. So that's really important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Absolutely. And literally, I had my friend's daughter connect with another friend who's a nurse, and she spent the day with her and was like, I don't want to be a nurse. Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

So make that know that now before you go down that road of all that education and all that time and effort and money. Yeah, for sure. And the other thing I'll say is that I don't care what school your kid goes to and what they sell you on that tour, the career centers are only as helpful as they can be. You have to do the work yourself. You have to network, you have to use your parents' networking opportunities. Can't just imagine. I mean, for example, Jenna did um the IU Media School has a great program in LA. What's so great about it is they secure the housing. That's it. She had to secure her own internship. They had like, I think maybe weekly or bi-weekly speakers they went to as a group, but like that was it. She had to nail an internship on her own in LA. She doesn't know anyone. So it took my networking and contacts. And of course, you know, I'm the mom that introduces her to people and backs out. I don't stay in it. But, you know, just getting their foot in the door. I mean, Indiana didn't help her land that internship. And she had to have one to be part of the program.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

So that's the hard part. It's like you need an experience. Everyone tells you you need more experience, but to get the experience, you need the experience. And it's this endless cycle. I'm constantly telling younger, and and actually, I tell a lot of more seasoned professionals this as well. But it's doesn't, it doesn't matter exactly where your degree is from if you can't communicate successfully and solve problems and show hustle. People want people who know how to solve problems, who know how to communicate, who know how to have that relentless work ethic. And nothing beats passion, right? Now I can be passionate about something. I'm passionate about singing. I'm terrible at singing. There's no amount of like training that will get me better. There just isn't. But people want someone who's gonna solve their problem, make their lives easier, help them meet and exceed their goals. Yes, the degree is important, but there are, I hear a lot of parents saying, well, if my kid went to this school and had this degree. No, no, don't know.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Did your kid write a thank you note after that first introductory phone call? That's what makes a difference.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

100%. Right. And if you can write a handwritten one, let me tell you, that makes a huge difference. Now I know that's hard in today's world because we don't know everybody's address and people aren't necessarily at an office, but you're a hundred percent right.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

It's that follow-up, it's those skills, those life skills that are so much more important. But again, just to go back to the university thing, like I even have friends, they've got a son in Kelly, he's a junior, and they're like, the school isn't helping him at all. I'm like, school's not gonna help him unless he goes there to the center and says, I've got this opportunity. Can you coach me through this? Right. But they're not gonna look at a database and be like, here's a job you can apply for. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work. I don't even know if it worked that way back when we went to college. I remember my job through and me neither. I got it through networking. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

It's just so important. And and that's the thing too, is there are these career fairs. Kids don't go or they don't go along, they're uncomfortable, they don't know what to say, they don't know how to do it. Going back to kind of what we talked about before, if you can get a part-time job in the career center, be in charge of running the fairs, be in charge of talking to the companies or be part of that for all things that you don't have to work a 40-hour week. Right. There are jobs, and you can even go and say, you don't have to pay me. Let me they'll pay you eventually. If you do a good job, they're gonna want you. Volunteer there for a couple hours a week, and this is gonna set you apart. It's gonna give you access, right? And absolutely. Another thing, Shane, that I cannot stress enough is people don't realize that nothing good is easy. Finding a job is hard. It is not, and and I talk about this, you know, one of the reasons this book is good, if I can say so myself, is that it's short chapters that are digestible nuggets. And I speak to kids in the way that, like, I want to be talked to. Like, give it to me straight, and use a little sarcasm and humor so it sticks. Nothing good is easy. Finding a job is not a like, I'll do it for a minute a day, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. You sit down and you really gotta focus. It's like any class, it takes time and effort, and you can't just cram for like the final. You gotta really work towards it. Another thing that's important is recognizing that just because someone else has a job, like, stop comparing yourself to other people. Everyone's gonna find their job at their time, right? And no job you're gonna get, your first job is not perfect. It's just like getting your first car. You're not gonna get the $200,000 BMW or whatever. Right, right. Your first car just needs to get you from point A to point B. Your first home, your first piece of real estate is not gonna be the same as your parents' home. So we have to have like expectations that are realistic. And I know you and Jenna talk about this all the time, like the highlight reel. Mm-hmm. Right? People are gonna make their job sound amazing. Like your friends, they want their job to sound. No job is like perfect or amazing. So we have to understand we just gotta get that first job to start to get that experience.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

So, Nikki, what are some of the kind of missteps that people, especially the people who are applying to jobs for the first time, you know, outside of internship life, what are some of the missteps that they make when they are applying or interviewing?

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Great question. So, one of the biggest mistakes we see a lot of people make is people tend to talk about what they themselves are looking for. And we have to remember companies don't hire you to help you. They don't care what you're looking for until they know you're the one they want. I care what they're looking for, the professional, but the companies don't. Companies hire you based on what you do for them. How are you going to solve their problems? How are you gonna make their lives easier? How are you gonna help them meet and exceed their goals? So, in an interview setting, we cannot, as professionals, be talking about what we ourselves are looking for. We need to find out from them what are you looking for? What are your priorities? Why does this job exist? What is most important to you as you assess talent for this role? What are the top three things that matter most to you as you look at the people that you might hire? And what does success look like short term and long term when this person is in the role? So that we can always be communicating from that angle. So that's one of the big mistakes that really professionals of all levels, but especially people early in their careers, because they are so focused on what they want to find, which of course we all are, but no company is hiring you to help train you to give you experience so you can go take it somewhere else, right? It's a very selfish process.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes back to kind of you know, being a small business owner, you know, I I am here to solve your problems. So let me tell you what solutions I offer. It's the same, it's the same kind of thing, it's the same selling yourself. Like you said, we're all in sales.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Yeah, absolutely. And I always say, liken it to a commercial on TV. You're watching TV, a Coca-Cola ad comes on, they don't say buy Coke so we can make more money. I mean, that's their goal.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Get you to buy the Coke, right? Coca-Cola, right? Yeah, they're they're not trying to um convey anything but what makes you want to buy their product, right? What's in it for you, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:52

So I want to go back for a second. We were talking about majors and choosing a major and all of that, and so you know, I I agree with you, I don't think you're Major actually matters. What it what matters is how you network beyond that. But I'm curious about your thoughts. There's so much change going on with AI. And I'm curious your thoughts. I actually heard, I can't remember the name of the university, but there's a school where every major, it's a small school, every major is paired with this and AI, this and AI. That's I'm curious, like what you think for those who are graduating high school right now. Should they be headed that way? Does it matter? What are your thoughts on this changing? I mean, the the industries are all quickly changing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

You know, I'm one opinion, and I am not necessarily the greatest fortune teller. Like, I don't see into the future necessarily as I can't predict what's coming exactly. But what I will say is there are certain jobs where AI is not as likely to overtake it. So, first of all, LinkedIn has some really great learning center programs about like entry-level college graduates, what to be thinking about. They're always posting things about AI. So I encourage everyone to make sure that you look at LinkedIn and really take advantage of those different sessions. There are jobs where AI right now isn't going to be able to replace a person. So a lot of revenue generation jobs where deals are being done. So sales. Sales is really foundational to every career. You know, everyone likes, well, not everyone. I know a lot of people like to say, I would never be in sales. You're in sales. As a kid, you're in sales. As a mom, you're in sales. As a consumer, you're in sales. Like we are selling all day, every day. Sales jobs, especially doing bigger deals. Selling bigger deals is something that AI is not going to replace. Um, nursing, not gonna replace, right? There's like certain healthcare where you're having human-to-human interactions. We look at real estate deals, we look at there's so many different, and we hear a lot about, you know, sort of blue-collar type jobs are really coming back, jobs with hands. Now, you're not necessarily gonna go to school, to college to become a plumber. You're gonna go to a trade school, but there are a lot of jobs where that human interaction is super important. And again, it's something that I think you can constantly research to learn what are the best jobs that aren't going to be replaced. We're not telling kids to become coders like we did 10 years ago. So we've just got to be thinking like that. Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Okay, so to shift gears, you know, we always talk about social media here. And of course, we know each other through social, but through many other ways, we have like 15 different ways we're connected now, which is awesome. So tell me a little bit about um adults who are graduating, specifically graduating college. What would you say to them about their social media at this point? They're job hunting, or maybe they've secured their first job. So I know we all have ways that we use LinkedIn, that we use tools for social media, but I'm talking more about how they should be presenting themselves on social media and what advice do you have?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

That's such a great question. Okay, social media, I cannot stress enough, is something that can make or break job offers and job security. If you have not set up your profiles to be secure, you have to. You have to make sure you're not visible to everybody in the universe because it can be problematic, first of all. Second of all, every company is looking at your social media. I don't care if you're graduating college or if you're 20 years into the workforce, every company, every HR team is evaluating your social media. So we cannot be making posts. I don't care how strongly you feel about something politically, something that's going on in the world, it can be used against you. Companies want to hire someone who is going to be a productive, positive force in their organization. And if they feel that anything about you is questionable, whether it's you're partying or you're saying something derogatory or aggressive, it is the deal breaker. I am sure you're similar to me. I have raised my boys to be so polite, to recognize that uh different opinions are fabulous. Like, listen, you're not the smartest one in the room ever. We can always learn. In corporate America, it's acceptable to change your mind. For some reason in politics, we aren't allowed to change minds, but you cannot be posting that, putting it out there. You just gotta keep it real clean. And I always use the grandma analogy. Like, if your grandma saw this, would you be in trouble? Which is a great way to put it. Yeah. You know, would you want grandma to see this? And if the answer is no, and listen, my kids have one grandma who's pretty hoping to a lot of stuff, but she still has boundaries. So you just it can really impact your ability to get a job. And I know some kids are like, I don't care, I feel strongly. Trust me, you do care. Mm-hmm. You're gonna continue to grow, and your beliefs today may change. You may tell me they won't, but they might because we all evolve. That's called growing up. You don't want to stay, I don't want to be 20-year-old Nikki. Like that, I've learned. Just I cannot implore you enough. Be careful of your social media. That's really good advice.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Really, for anyone at any age, it's not really just about people graduating college. This is for people our age as well. Yeah. To, you know, be careful, be sure that you can back it up if you're gonna say it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

And be kind. Be kind, be kind. The world is a difficult place. We do not have information, access to information that other people have necessarily who are making decisions. Just be kind, be nice, and just recognize that like if you want to get a job and you want to hold your job, people see and it can really impact you.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

That's great advice. I think that's a great way for us to end our conversation. But I do want to say, we brought up your book a couple times. For those who are not watching on YouTube who are just listening, I'll make sure to put a link to your book in the show notes so everyone knows how to find it. And how else can people connect with you, Nikki, if they are looking for either coaching or they're looking for a new position?

SPEAKER_01 28:51

That is fantastic. Okay, Nikki at the NLPgroup.net. So I'm gonna spell that out, Nikki N-I-C at the N is in Nancy, L is in Larry, P is in Petergroup.net. And that's the name of my executive search firm, the NLP group. I have a number of colleagues. Feel free to reach out, send your resume, any information about what you're looking for. And if we don't have a job for you right now, we will keep you posted. If you're interested in career coaching, job search coaching, interview coaching, I can send you information. And again, that's why I wrote the book I did, because a lot of people really, for the price of two cups of coffee, just want access to all of that information that we share and don't necessarily want that one-on-one level coaching. So it's a great sort of middle ground. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Nikki, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a great conversation. I'm excited to share it. I'm sorry that Jenna missed it, but she'll have to catch up when we when we publish it.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Absolutely. And like I said, Jenna is gonna be great. She is in great shape. She's got a very good head on her shoulders, and all will be well. But thank you, Shane. I really appreciate your help. Absolutely having me. Take care.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

You too. Thanks for joining us on the Social Dialogue Podcast. If you liked today's conversation, be sure to leave us a five star rating and a review and share it with a friend.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Keep the dialogue going with us on social. Find us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. I'm Shane and I'm Jenna. Thanks for listening.