Surviving Layoffs And Finding Opportunities In Today's Labor Market With Laureen Kautt

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Surviving Layoffs And Finding Opportunities In Today's Labor Market With Laureen Kautt

Our guest is Laureen Kautt. Laureen is Senior Talent Acquisition Partner with Entrata. Welcome to the show, Laureen.

Thank you, Adrian. I'm very excited to be here.

Why don't you start by introducing yourself to the audience? Tell us a little bit about your background, professional and personal.

I would love that. Whenever I get that question, for me, it's so loaded because how far do you want me to go back? Anyway, for our purposes, my name is Laureen. I am basically one of those interesting people who found her vocation very early on in her career. I was in sales for a large payroll company back in the early days. A colleague of mine went to this thing called recruiting. She said, "You need to check this out. You can make a lot of money." I was like, "What is recruiting?"

Long and the short of it is what started out as I had an opportunity to make a lot of money turned into a true lifelong vocation. It all started when I started placing people at my clients. I started getting handwritten thank you notes on how that particular interaction and position helped to impact their lives in very meaningful ways.

There are times that I would receive these notes, and I said, "I'm not doing this for the money. I'm actually helping people." There started my vocation. Out of this vocation came my career coaching practice naturally, working with people, working with companies, and naturally being able to help others find fulfilling work. Preparing for interviews, performance, and career road-mapping naturally flowed from me. I've done that for many years.

In 2013, I had a pivotal point. I went corporate. I was in the agency world for many years prior. My corporate work allowed me to play in a different area of recruitment. I was able to take all of my agency experience and translate that into global talent acquisition from the sense of being able to build functions for organizations globally across EMEA and APAC.

In the early years of my corporate work, it was a lot of fun, hard work, and a lot of learning. Over time, what I started to specialize in is helping high-growth companies find talent to help them achieve their revenue goals. That took me to a number of different places. Most recently, I've been at Entrata for a little over a year, working with their go-to-market team and helping them with their expansion when it comes to their sales engineering team and their revenue operations team.

Would you like to share a little more about your current role at Entrata, like what your duties are? Also, share a few great things that are happening at Entrata. Them being a great partner for the multifamily industry, the audience on our show would like to hear about some great stuff that's going on out there.

I like to premise by saying when we look at the major human needs that us, as all humans have, it's food, water, air, and shelter. One thing that I love and that drives me to be in the multifamily industry is that we get to play in a space that greatly affects humans globally. We talk about passion, purpose, vision, and vocation. Regardless of the role that we all play in this wonderful industry, we're playing in a very important space. Overarchingly, the multifamily industry is such an amazing place to be.

Entrata, for those that might not know who we are, we are a company that provides technology-enabled solutions for the multifamily space. We have an operating system for which we have over 50 products and services that can support our clients no matter how small or large they may be. I just came off of a company and sales kickoff. I just flew back in from Utah. I'm pretty hyped about what we're doing. There's more to come. If you're not following Entrata's company page on LinkedIn or Entrata in general, please check us out on our website and LinkedIn. You'll see some of the great things that we're doing as we spearhead into the future. I play the role of Senior Talent Partner, so I support our chief revenue officer and his organization in finding amazing talent.

Laureen, I want to talk about the current labor market. There are lots of challenges out there. People, qualifying individuals, and professionals have a hard time finding the right opportunities. Even though there's a lot of opportunity out there, in my opinion, I see that there's quite a bit of a disconnect. Companies want to hire. They have a huge need of hiring new people. Candidates want to get hired, but things don't happen as fast as they should or we hope they would.

There are also a lot of layoffs going around, probably not so much in multifamily, but all over the place. We've seen this almost on a daily basis. Thousands of people are being laid off. I want to get your take on the current state of the labor market. What do you see happening out there? Where do you think we're going with the labor shortages? There's no debate here. There are still significant labor shortages. Even with so many people being laid off, there are still other millions of jobs available that are hard to fill.

I've been at this for a long time. I've been through many different labor crises throughout the multiple decades. Here we are in 2023, and we have a plate in front of us as well. I always like to say the more things change, the more things stay the same. I can't speak directly in terms of why all the layoffs. When it comes to talent strategy in general, regardless of industry, it's very important to align yourself with a strategy. When a company has a particular goal in mind, they need to reverse engineer that back to what makes the most sense from a time, talent, and treasure perspective and plan accordingly. Talent strategy, regardless of industry, always will be extremely important.

Fun fact, I went on the website, We Are Apartments. I'm going to read this quote that if you go to their website, this comes right up. It says that, "In the US, we're going to need to build 4.3 million more apartments by 2035 to fill the shortage from underbuilding from the financial crisis of 2008." Think about that for a minute for our industry in particular. Our industry in and of itself is growing.

I'd love to share a quick example of how this is playing. In 2021, I was working for a high-growth company pre-IPO going public, and we were scaling our sales organization. They needed a high-profile salesperson on the West Coast. I initiated a conversation with someone in Washington State. She was a spot-on, awesome candidate. She was interested. I was interested. We started to prepare to get her into the interview process.

In 2021, she said, literally within a week of our engagement, "Laureen, I had something to share with you. My husband and I decided in a blink of an eye to say what would happen if we put our house on the market, and we did. We had three cash offers the next day. Now, we're renting in North Carolina." It's uncanny what this pandemic has done for our multifamily industry. People are open to relocating now like never before on their own dime, and the housing market has allowed that.

Has that been changing? Has that been normalizing? Yes. We've seen things happen since 2020 going back to some semblance of what we defined as the norm. The reality is when you look at Gen Z and the population that's coming through the next tier of their life where they're ready to move out on their own, and you look at folks who are employed or not employed saying, "I think I can live where I want now. I don't necessarily have to be where I'm told," that all affect our industry in a very positive way.

How we approach that is going to look and feel a little bit different. Overarchingly, I feel like our industry is positioned very nicely for great growth, regardless of what we're hearing on the news about what's happening in general. That's one. Talent strategy is important no matter what the industry. Our industry, regardless of what you're hearing, just to base it on the data and my experience talking to people, is in a growth mode. It comes then down to how we are making ourselves findable for talent to find us for the specific roles that we need them for. That is a great question, and that's a strategy both on the side of the job seeker, but as well sourcing strategy on the side of the organization.

You touched on a very important topic. How do we get to become ourselves seen, both on the candidates' and employer's side? Are there a few tips that you have to share either with candidates or with employers that are having difficulties attracting a decent pipeline of talent?

The big question that comes to mind, whether you're a job seeker or an organization looking for talent, is the why. Simon Sinek went out and defined why and wrote a book on it. Everything comes down to why. That does translate into this, too. Let's talk about it from the company perspective first. Why do you need the person and why would the person want to work here? That's your why on the side of the company. From a candidate or a job seeker's perspective, why are you looking for a new opportunity? Why are you looking at this industry? What is your why and your what, then we could figure out your how. It's the same for a company too.

I don't have a specific data point from McKinsey or Bain, but I could tell you talking to hundreds of candidates a week. When I ask them, "What's important for you when it comes to a new opportunity?" The first question that I'm asked is, "What is the culture that's fostered within the organization?" The people of an organization essentially define the culture. A company can define its values, but how people live those values is what defines your overarching culture. What is that, and how are you as the company sharing that with the marketplace?

People want to know about the people and the culture, and then they want to know about the opportunity. From a company perspective, once you can define, "Here's the culture. Here are the people that make this culture great. Here are the competencies that equate to that. Now, I can better define a marketing strategy around how I want to market this job to the talent marketplace."

On the flip side, if I'm a candidate, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? Is that what I love to do? Where can I do this and feel fulfilled? That's where you as the company's talent marketing strategy come into play. I'll be honest. I didn't know this industry exists when they reached out to me. I have never, in my career, been exposed to this industry.

Have I rented? Yes. Have I paid rent? Yes. Have I paid utilities? Yes. I had no idea that this was like a whole industry. How exciting to find out that there is, but that's because someone reached out to me to share the news. The days of posting and praying that candidate pools that you need are going to find you have decimated.

If you are in talent recruiting now, I'm sure you will relate to me that you will get hundreds of resumes submitted for a job spec. There might be one, maybe two that align with the specifications that you need. I know for me, I have to go out and look for the talent. If you're just waiting for job specs to come and searching on Indeed based on what it is you do, you might be missing out on a huge opportunity.

Certain job sites and the functionality behind them scrape from company sites. Many times, they give boosted opportunities to those companies that pay. You might not be seeing all the job opportunities out there. That's where it becomes important. What do you want to do and where do you want to do it? You have to develop your own strategy to find that.

Talking about strategy, I want to get to the next topic. Talk a little bit about career coaching. You've been doing this for a while. I'd like to get your take on a few things regarding career coaching. What advice do you have for someone that wants to elevate their career?

Elevating your career is going to be defined differently for each person, depending on where they are in their career roadmap. If you look at a typical organizational environment, so if you're in an analyst role and you want to move to a senior role or a lead role to a manager role to a C-Suite role, the natural progression that we're taught we should do is it's important for you to understand the skills, functionality, and competencies you need in order to elevate.

No longer is it just time and position. Time and position used to be an '80s mentality where, "I've been in this role for ten years, so naturally I should be the next one to be a manager." It's more about those areas I described. How do you figure out what that looks like? I liked the world when I came out of school. You can find out pretty much anything you need by looking online.

If you're in an analyst role and you're looking for that next step, find the people who are in that role and look at what they've done. Start aligning yourself internally where you are and open up yourself to getting those skills and experience. There may not be an opportunity where you are, but when you know what you want to do and where you want to do it, and you created a roadmap for yourself, then you know that you could go out and try to find that position elsewhere. You'd be more properly equipped for that position by getting those functional skills and experience that you need in order to move.

There's a new anomaly that's happening. I don't want to say it's because of COVID because I'm quite sick of hearing, "Because of COVID, we have this, that, and the other thing." I want to call it human evolvement. It's wanting to do what they love to do and do it where they love to do it, regardless of the title. That comes down to an important introspection for all of us in terms of what we love.

I could provide an example of one of my clients. I love this story because this person is much happier now than this person was years ago. Someone reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, "I need your help." I was like, "Who are you? I don't know who you are, but I'll talk to you. Let's schedule a time." Anyway, this person was at an organization for 35 to 40 years.

Right out of school in technology, this person started with this organization and moved his way up due to time and role to a C-Suite position over technology. In a blink of an eye, a new CEO came into this organization. As it sometimes does happen, that whole C-Suite changed. He received a package and lost his job. The last time this person had to find a job was in the back of a newspaper.

He told me that the reason he reached me was he had interviewed for all of these C-Suite positions in the area he lives and none of them went well. Even though he felt he should have gotten a few offers, he didn't get any offers. He didn't understand why. This example, as a side note, is applicable because we are in a stage where a lot of folks have lost their positions, either like this or some type of circumstance. This applies to anyone who might have lost their job inadvertently, not due to their own things, but through what the company decisions were.

He went through and regurgitated this story. I was on the telephone with him. Through the telephone, this guy is angry, he can't get over the fact that this happened, and it was very negative the way he was talking. Everything was negative, the tone in his voice. It related me to a coaching concept that we like to use, which has some psychological foundation to it. It's called a triad.

If you imagine a triangle, it goes like this. The words that you use affect what you think and how you think, which then also affects your physiology. Your physiology can be felt whether we're face-to-face, through video, or on the telephone. I let him vent for literally two one-hour sessions. I said, "I'm just going to let him regurgitate and get this all out."

In the third conversation that was started, I didn't say anything and I let him open up the conversation. He started with, "I'm looking at all the job advertisements and I haven't found anything that's in the caliber of the C-Suite for what I do." I literally said, "Are you done?" He's like, "What do you mean?" I said, "Are you done with the negative thoughts and negative words? That's exactly how you come across in an interview."

Repurposing the words that we use and how we think affects how we present whether it's on phone or at an interview, or specifically how we approach each day. In the market that we're in, that becomes very important. What do you want to do? This gentleman found out through our conversations that he didn't like the high-level work. He missed being close to technology and touching tech. He missed all of that.

He wound up taking a senior director role at a company. For the '80s org chart, it looks like he took a step down. He did take less compensation than he was making, but he's still gainfully employed and he is so happy and loves what he does every day. I want you to think about that because that is the way people are thinking. Whether you're in an organization and you're looking at the season for performance reviews, if you're doing a performance review, do a personal performance review. How happy are you with what you are doing with your role? Are you finding great satisfaction?

There are other opportunities out there that you might be able to translate your competencies to. In some cases, have a similar title. In some cases, have similar compensation. It depends. The bottom line, we work more effectively when we love what we do and we love where we're doing it. That's the culture and the people.

The functional competencies that we have and the desires we have are our why for our work. I know it was a lot of words, but I wanted to share that because that was important in this marketplace to think about. When we talk about career progression, how do you define that for you? You live that for you, not necessarily what someone says you should be doing.

This is a great example of career coaching and what meaningful work means for each one of us. It's not necessary, "I need to have the same title." If I'm not happy with the work that I have to do in order to be that person and to be in that chair, probably this is not the right chair for me. I got to do soul searching, look within, and ask myself what it is that makes me happy.

This brings me to another question regarding career coaching. When you meet with a client for career coaching, what are some good questions that you ask? It is in order to determine why they came to you and what made them approach you and for you to break down who they are and what their goals are. What are some good questions that you're asking? What's the initial baseline? How do you establish the baseline of this relationship?

A lot of people don't know, and they all say, "What is a career coach?" The best question I ask is, "What is it that you love to do? On top of your head, I don't want you to think about it, what do you love to do?" Interesting fun fact, 9 out of 10 people will start by telling me what they don't like to do. I expect that. If I don't get that, I'm shocked and I recognize the person for it. I'm like, "That's great. We're starting at a place of positive energy. We could take that now and start to transform it."

9 times out of 10, people will start with what they don't like to do. That is that focus on the negative. I don't know if it's generational or why that's ingrained in our psychology, but we tend to want to focus on what's not working and what we don't like. We miss out on all the things we love to do and how things are working well for us that we could capitalize on and grow.

It sounds simple, but that's my first baseline question because people will reach out typically, "My career isn't going well. I was laid off. I need a change. I work under a toxic culture. I have my performance review, how do I approach that? I have this going on and I'm afraid to go to HR." I get a lot of those general questions. As you could hear, most of that is there's something going on that triggers the person. What we do is we unpack that because there's something that it's stemming from.

I would encourage everyone to think about this. If you're going through a struggle now, take a deep breath. It's okay because we're humans and we all struggle. Take a deep breath and think for yourself, "Let me reverse engineer this back to figure out, was there a sign that the company was going through a downsize? Was there a sign that my position was going to be eliminated?"

More than likely, you'll find that there are signs that get you to where you are and gets you more in tune to think about them for the future but also help you define what you want versus what you don't want. You may love high-growth companies, but you want to make sure that you're aligning with their vision and their strategy for their high growth.

Are they hiring 100 people, or are they saying, "Based on our growth projections, it's going to be important for us to hire this way and be more strategized about it?" Coming from a place of knowing what it is you want versus what you don't want helps us to look at the full picture of why you are where you are, so we can positively impact that. You might know where you are and you know what you want. How do we go find it?

That's quite an excellent picture of how career coaching works. I have had on this show different guests that do some career coaching, and it's something that I'm passionate about. I on and off coach people, too, not as a side hustle or as a job. I just try to give them the best advice that I could give them given their circumstances.

Think about coaching this way. I live in Kansas City, so go Chiefs. Andy Reid is not throwing the ball on the field during the game. Andy Reid is on the side, but what he's doing is he's listening and observing. He's around everything and putting strategies in place to help his players initiate. From what I could see, he's doing an amazing job.

Go Chiefs. Let's see how they do in the playoffs. They have a good chance of another Super Bowl. The next topic that I want to touch on is resumes. On average, it's known that an employer looks at the resume for 6 to 7 seconds. That is a very short time for the candidates to impress the employer and catch their attention. With that being said, what pieces of advice would you have for someone when it comes to creating, adjusting, and putting together a resume in order to catch potential employers' attention?

This is the art and the science of recruiting. You're absolutely right. It used to be eight seconds, but it is getting less. For government jobs, there's a website. They do have a scanning tool that will scan keywords to answer questions in a certain way. Their systems use technology to scan and auto-reject or move to the hiring manager. In larger organizations in industries that are well-known, everyday names might have similarities.

For the most part, companies applicant tracking systems or the usual suspects that are out there are not auto-dispositioning unless the company inputs certain questions that have to be answered a certain way. For example, the role must sit in Texas, so they might put the question, "Where are you located?" If you put in Oklahoma, then the system might auto-dispo you. For the most part, if you've applied for a role in general, your resume is going to attach to a requisition that's in the line of sight of the recruiter or the HR professional, however large the company is, and it's going to come up when they look at their search.

You're asking, "If I've only got 6 or 7 seconds to catch your eye, how do I do that?" It all comes down to the way that the resume is written in terms of its relevancy. The last time I applied for a job when I was looking for a job, not for research, was in 1997. I don't typically mask my resume. I connect and promote myself in a way that's over and above the resume. Usually, I'm getting my resume requested after I have an initial conversation.

As a side note, a resume and applying do not necessarily equate to success a lot of the time because A) You're competing with paper. B) How you choose to write and design that resume is going to matter. I will tell you a couple of key points. If you're going to put a lot of graphics on your resume, like a picture, circles, triangles, or a column that has all the stats, the more formatting you use in a resume, when you apply and it comes to the recruiter, sometimes it comes through with dots and lines. We don't see the resume.

We have to literally go down, look at PDF, download it, and look at it. If it's not properly populating on the screen, and I'm not saying every recruiter, but there are some amazing recruitment professionals out there that are going to open the resume to look, "Why did this person apply?" Many recruiters will send a declination, they didn't even look at it.

1) The less formatting, the better. 2) When you first align with what it is you want to do and where you want to do it, your content needs to read to that. You can't send a sales resume for a software engineering job because when your resume comes up on the recruiter's screen, if they're looking for a PHP developer and you sold a technology that was created in PHP but never developed it before and that's what you want to do, they're going to decline the resume.

It comes down to, if I want to be a PHP developer, that's a whole other conversation if I've been in sales and I never touched a code. You need to go through some thought of, "Where do you want to start to learn that? What training have you had?" You might want to take a few steps down to get a few steps up, and you might move up very quickly. That's a whole different scenario. Make sure you're applying to relevant positions and your resume reads to that position.

Let's talk maintenance for a second because I had a person I was working with who's been doing general contracting work for a large private company. He wants to get into more of a corporate type of work, and he didn't know how he could translate these skills. He's done very large projects that involve things like concrete to smaller projects that were around electrical and plumbing, so very certified and well-versed.

We talked about multifamily. He said, "Tell me what that is." I was like, "You don't know what that is?" He said, "I didn't know what that is, but I was in legal tech before. I had no idea that that was an option for me." When he sent me his resume to look at, I would never send that resume out. How you properly word your experience in alignment with what the company's looking for and the location for which they're looking for it will attract the recruiter to pay attention. They know just by looking if there's relevancy or not.

If you're a salesperson and you don't have any numbers on your resume, revenue target, growth percentages, and average deal size, more than likely, the recruiter will pass through because they want to see that a person aligns with the needs of what their company's looking for. Regardless of the position, how you present for what it is you're looking for. I find that for a lot of people, there will be an event that happens, and then they'll mass-send a resume that was not updated. That does show, and that's why it's so quick to disposition out or reject. We would say, "No, but maybe for another position" or "No, thank you for your time."

I want to touch on something else that candidates have difficulties with. Not all candidates, but a lot of people on the job market do not have elevated interviewing skills. The first position that comes to mind is maintenance technician. Maintenance technicians are the most sought-out professionals in our industry currently. I could have probably 10,000 technicians in my back pocket. I could probably have them all placed within a week. It's that big of a need. What type of advice would you have for someone that doesn't haven't highly developed interview skills?

For maintenance professionals, first off, you guys and girls do amazing work. There is a need for you, not just in the multifamily. There's a need for you across any living situation around. Your skills are highly sought-after because you have skills that are needed that not everybody has. Your skills technically and functionally are important.

From the competency standpoint in terms of relationships with clients or customers, you have this multifaceted space where you have to technically know how to do it, know what the client needs and wants, and be able to translate that into what you need to do technically. You also need to be client-facing and be able to communicate with the end user whom you're providing the services. That's a huge job.

I would share with you that, in interviewing, if you've never had to do it before, it seems very daunting. I want everyone to look at interviewing as strictly a conversation like we're having, Adrian. I was excited because I love talking about this. I don't look at it so much as an interview as much as a conversation. If you can take "I have an interview," out of your mind and say, "I can't wait to meet this person," you're already changing the thoughts in your head, the words that you use, and your physiology.

It's going back to that triad again that we talked about earlier. You want to get your mind around the fact that you're looking to have conversations with new people to share about yourself but also to learn more about other things. How you approach the interview should be much like you would approach a client or an end user. "I want to learn as much as I can about this person so I can assess for myself if this is the right position for me."

Remember, a lot of times people think an interview is one-sided, meaning, "The company's going to ask me questions and I need to answer them correctly because I want to get this job," versus, "I need to assess if this company is right for me. Do the people align? Does the culture align? Does the work align with what I love to do? I'm looking forward to talking to this company to see if they're truly a prospect of mine for a new employer."

You see how I changed that because a lot of people would look into the interview as it's strictly the company. It's a conversation. I used to call it a dance. They're going to ask you a question, and you're going to respond, but you can also respond with a question. In preparing for an interview in general, there are a few things to always keep in mind.

Number one, do your research. Look up the company. You can find it as easily as googling it. If you don't have a LinkedIn account, make one. There's so much information on LinkedIn about companies, people, and cultures that you can find out. You could also google it. You could also look on Facebook. Some people are public on Facebook. You could find it on all the different social media sites. Try to do your research and have a general understanding of who it is you're speaking with. Have your list of questions prepared for you. Questions don't equate necessarily to pay.

Pay is becoming more publicized now. As we look at '23 and beyond, we're going to see a lot of states requiring that the pay ranges and such be publicized. There used to be this mystery around compensation, "I don't want to tell them what I'm making because what if they have more in their budget?" This whole thing we used to do like, "How could we dance around this?" It's becoming less like that and just, "Here's the range."

Remember, pay is not the only thing. Most companies will pay a decent and average range for a job. Focus your conversations more on the technical aspects. "What does success look like in this role? Is this a backfill role? What was it about the previous person in this role that didn't work? What about this person worked? Based on that experience, what is it that you need?" Listen for those things so that you can assess for yourself if it's the right position for you. It goes back to that triad. What you're thinking translates to the words that you use, and then your physiology.

Remember that you're in a very important and highly desirable position in maintenance. For you, it's going to be a matter of where you want to do it. Do you like small amounts of properties? Do you like large amounts of properties? Do you like the multifamily industry? What about it? Do you like the student housing part? Do you like military housing? Do you like commercial and affordable? The list goes on. You have a lot of choices.

Figure out you first. Be equipped and empowered to know that you're in a highly desirable skillset. Not everybody can do it. It's not that they don't want to do it. It's that they can't do it. You have some great skills to share, but figure out for yourself first where you want to do it. Do your research, and then prepare. If you've never interviewed before and if it scares you, I love to go in front of a mirror, ask a friend, or practice and roleplay with people. Find a trusted resource to roleplay until you could feel comfortable with the thoughts, the words, and obviously and naturally, your physiology.

You mentioned pay a couple of times previously. What is your advice for candidates when it comes to getting the best offer? How can a candidate make the best out of a situation and an offer that's being presented to them?

There are two answers I have for that question. There's the person who knows their value and worth. They know what the market is. If they were reached out to by a recruiter at a company and the recruiter says, "What are you looking for?" they can steadfastly say, "I will not move unless I'm at X." It's up to the company then if X is not in their comp range to see if they could get an opportunity to meet that if they want the talent.

If they say something like, "Our range is quite large. Where do you need to be?" You could respond and say, "I'm open to what the market is allowing right now. Is there anything you could share with me?" Normally, by that point, the person will share some facet of that. At the initial conversation, let's say it's a 2 or 3-phase interview process, I probably wouldn't go any further than, "I'm interested in what you had to say and I'd like to pursue the next steps. If you think that you'd be open to that as well, we could talk about that later." You maybe need to find out more about the day-to-day of the role. What are the expectations? That will all filter into what your expectations are.

Let's say the conversation never comes up, and you, for whatever reason, didn't want to mention it throughout the process and they come to you with an offer. Your answer is always, "Thank you so much. I'm very honored to receive this offer. When do you need an answer by?" If they say, "We need an answer now." Typically, you won't hear that. Say, "I need to take that back and look at the numbers to make sure that it aligns with where I need to be." Most people will give you 24 to 48 hours to take that back and look at it. Look through all the verbiage and such, the numbers.

If the pay is not in the line, it's okay to come back and say, "From where I am today for what you offered, I'm very honored to receive this offer. In looking at the details and the expectations of the role, I would be looking for X. Are you able to meet me there?" Sometimes they may say yes. Sometimes they might say, "I can meet you halfway there." Sometimes they say no. Ultimately, the position is then up to you.

The underlying answer here is don't be afraid of the conversation. Have the conversation. Just like the job search, the more research you've done ahead of time, the more empowered you would be to say, "I'm looking for X. Based on the NAA salary guides, the range should be here, and that range is good for me." Do your research, be empowered, and don't be afraid of the compensation question.

The next topic I want to touch on is counteroffers. Let's say you were to be asked by a candidate, not a candidate that you're interviewing for your company, but as a consultant. If a candidate will come to you and say, "I'm on the market. I accepted this position. My company has made a counteroffer," what would be your advice to them?

I've been in recruiting, which is a long time, and you can't tell from my profile because I don't go back that far. Since I've been in recruiting, I have shared and consulted with people to say, "Never accept a counteroffer." I've stood by that myself, although it's very hard for me in some situations. Unless that counteroffer is going to improve whatever the reason was you were looking to leave in the first place, it doesn't make sense because you're just then staying for the money.

The people that I know who've accepted counteroffers typically have come back 3 to 6 months later to say, "I made a mistake. Is that job still open?" I'm not telling anybody what to do. I'm just saying in my experience, which has been a very long time, I don't encourage accepting counteroffers unless the organization is saying, "We want you to stay, so we're going to offer you X. We're also going to change these things that you said were not in alignment with what you needed." That's a little bit different of a scenario versus, "We're going to throw an additional $10,000 or $20,000 at you." That's one side.

The flip side is if that counteroffer was very intriguing and you feel like the relationship is strong enough with the company that you're engaging with, I'm not going to say you have to, but you might go back and say, "XYZ counteroffered me X amount to stay. Is there any wiggle room on your end?" They may come back and say yes. They may come back and say no. People have done that as well. In the places I've worked throughout my career and the clients I've supported, sometimes that's yes and sometimes that's no. You have to be prepared for that.

For the next section of our conversation, I have some rapid-fire questions. Professional or fiction, what are some of your favorite books?

Professionally, I'm listening to Atomic Habits on Audible. If you haven't read it or listened to it, it's an amazing book. I bought it for my kids for Christmas because I feel like they need to read this early on. That's a great professional book. Fiction-wise, Alex Michaelides wrote a book called The Silent Patient. A fast read, mystery, and the twists and turns are very good. If you like to read lifetime movies, Colleen Hoover is a fast read. I don't know if they'll agree with me, but anyway, those are my things.

I love books on business strategy. Becoming Bulletproof is another book that I've read. The Blue Ocean Strategy is on my list here. There's a book called Disruptor, which is about the entrepreneurial world as it relates to women and how women are being strong disruptors in certain industries. If you've ever bought one of those bidets that sit on top of your toilet, the gal who invented that is the one who wrote that book. It's very interesting how she founded that product and took it to market. That wasn't a rapid-fire answer, Adrian, but there you go.

It's all good. I enjoy it, even if it's not a quick answer. The next question is about failure. We, as a society, are not still at a point where we're so open about discussing or talking about failure. All we could see around us, everybody wants to show their success, whether it's on social media, or whether you look at Hollywood, TV, or superstars. Everybody talks about success. Very few take the time to walk us through how we got here. Is it something that happens overnight, like we're so magically great at things? The question is, how did a failure or apparent failure set you up for future success?

It is what sets you up for future success. If you don't fail, you don't grow. That's the opposite of, when you fail at something, it means, "That didn't work out. Why?" The word why comes back into our conversation because true failure means you never ask why. There was no desire to understand why it didn't work.

In my career, I've failed a hundred times, but I'd be happy to share with you why I failed because along with that, I would be able to share with you how I grew from that. I was inadvertently part of a position elimination in 2019. I'm a 4 and 5 always in my reviews, and I was devastated. It threw me into Imposter syndrome. It took me a minute to figure out what happened to me.

I can look back on that situation now and tell you that, although I was devastated at the time because I thought I'd retire from that company, thank goodness that happened to me because I would've been miserable. I would've stayed and retired from that company. Of all the great experiences I've had on the other side of that, I can look back. I would love our hindsight to not be 20/20. I love us to have a 20/20 vision because that would've saved me a lot of heartaches. You could ask my family. I couldn't believe it.

Anyway, I look back and say, "Thank God that happened because I was able to do all these things." I still failed along the way. I still had things that didn't work the right way and didn't mature the way maybe they should have, but I still learned and grew from that. It got me to where I am now, which is a place of joy, happiness, and living what I love to do. I want that for everyone, truly. That's my prayer. I want everyone to do what they love to do. Not just a job, but to actively participate in what they do.

If you fail, were laid off, or something negative has happened, please recognize that there's the other side of that. There's another side that when you do recognize the value of that, you can look back and see. Hopefully, the next time around, that 20/20 vision becomes more present than having to look far back maybe months or years.

What advice do you have for a young person that's ready to enter the real world, whether a high school graduate or a college graduate that's ready to take their first job, either rent their first apartment or first home?

They don't teach you this in school. Career services departments, although their intent is good, don't always provide a great foundation. In military transition, they have free services to help them transition to civilian. I've been told by hundreds of military professionals that they're not very valuable. Here it is for us. I encourage anyone that has young kids going through school. Please read this part of our talk. If nothing else mattered, this part becomes important.

What do you love to do? How do you want to do it? Where do you want to do it? The sooner you can answer those questions for yourself, you can start building what will be a career for you. You'll start studying the right subjects. You'll start learning the right vocations. You'll start meeting the right people. You'll start developing a roadmap for yourself toward success.

There's nothing worse than getting midway through some type of technical training or university training and still not knowing what you want to do. People will tell you, but you're getting this great overarching education. At the end of the day, what if you find out that your call or your passion is the medical field? Now, you've let four years go by with no biology classes because you got a general degree, and now you've got to go back to school double or triple the time.



If it's a vocation that you love to do, look for what's out there that's using that, or if it's technology. Young people, I can't say this enough. If you're doing something and you say to yourself, "This could be done a better way," build it. Don't wait. Build it now. Get the resources. You can learn everything you need to do online. The world is your oyster. There are industries that you know nothing about that are vibrant, impactful, and doing amazing things for humanity.

Go find those. Don't wait for a career fair where only those that were lucky enough to get a place and pay enough money for a booth who knew about your school to show up are there. A lot of times, those are the same companies that have been going there for twenty years. If you were to look at those companies' Glassdoor ratings or look at their reviews or what people say about them, you might not be giving them your resume. Take it into your own hands and move forward with a plan versus just making a plan based on what's put in front of you. A lot of times, it's a very teeny weeny percentage of what's out there. The overarching to all of that is to start figuring out what it is you want and love to do.

In the last three years, what behavior or habit has most improved your life?

The first one would be perseverance, which I know is not necessarily a habit. Perseverance means that even when you're not having a good day, your goals are set in front of you. Because you love what you do and you love where you do it, it doesn't matter, you persevere, you get up, and you do it. I work 100% remotely. How many people work 100% remotely? How easy is it to roll into your home office later in the day in your pajamas? The opportunity is there to do that.

I still wake up at 5:30. I still take a shower. I have a number of Zoom suits over here depending on the day. I put myself together because I want to persevere. Even though my environment has changed, who I am as a professional hasn't. I persevere all the wantingness to fall into bad habits and not doing so. That is the best habit that I picked up.

When you lose your focus or you're feeling overwhelmed, how do you get back on track?

If it's during the day and I feel overwhelmed, I love going outside and breathing. Sometimes when we're in a pressure cooker, we don't breathe. In fact, I would challenge everyone to breathe in for five seconds, hold for five seconds, and then breathe out for five seconds. We forget to breathe because we put ourselves in a pressure cooker.

We've got a lot going on personally and professionally. Things are happening, and so we forget to breathe. If you do that exercise and do it five times in a row, you'll recognize what true breathing feels like, and you'll recognize that you're not breathing either. I'm guilty of it too. Being able to breathe and focus on the breath becomes important.

I will also share with you that if you're working remotely or you're working in an office, it's okay to step away for 10 to 15 minutes to breathe or to go for a walk, depending on where you are at the time of year, even to have a book near your desk to say, "I need to take a minute for myself, so I'm going to do my breathing exercises and I'm going to read a chapter in my book."

No one is going to not approve of that, but it does separate you. Especially in our remote world, you have to legitimately put it in your calendar to step away, or you will feel yourself burnout. There are times for me, I could start at 5:30 and I could be sitting in this chair until 8:00 at night if I wanted to or if I needed to. I have to set those boundaries for myself, and I have to fill those time slots with meaningful things that are going to help me be productive for work but also for my own personal life as well.

I learned from your bio that you are actively involved in helping military personnel transition to civilian life. How do you think the multifamily industry could benefit from this type of individuals, the individuals that are coming back into civilian life, especially on the maintenance side?

On the maintenance side, absolutely it is. Military professionals, first off, I always thank them for their service. They're coming to the table with a vast array of skills, like project management skills, program management skills, technical skills, and functional skills that are relatable and translatable to traditional business. It's just not represented well when they come out because it's a very technical military. I love working with my military folks because I'm like the gift that keeps on giving.

I was just told from a gentleman who was a master chief in the Coast Guard who had retired from his military service. He's now a program manager for a company in Texas. "I've got 10 to 15 colleagues who came out of the military. I told them what you told me to do with my resume, and they all got employed." I was like, "Great. Keep doing what you're doing."

I had a pilot from the Air Force here in the Kansas City area. Olathe is Garmin's headquarters. He's working on the aeronautical Garmin machines versus a big commercial pilot. It is what they typically will do, either fly for UPS, FedEx, or commercial. In our industry, we need to think about how and where we can employ folks transitioning out of the military.

We need to advertise in our industry to those coming out of the military that we're open to learning more about them and seeing how their skillsets align. Thank you for bringing that up. It's dear to my heart. I think every industry can benefit from folks who are coming out based on what they're looking for in terms of their civilian career.

Thank you very much for taking the time to be here on the show. This was an amazing conversation. I could keep going, but also, I wanted to be respectful of your time. I know that this is not the only thing that you have a plan for, to just talk to me on the show. In closing, I do want to give you the opportunity to say something you didn't have the chance to say during our conversation, or to maybe answer a question that you wish I would've asked and I didn't for whatever reason.

You asked the most amazing questions. I always hope that if I can bring value to one person and help one person with whatever it is that they're experiencing with their career, finding a new career, or discerning a career, then it's a win for me. I'm so grateful to be here. Underlyingly, I would like to share that the times nowadays look and feel a little bit different than the times of the past. What people want and what they want to pursue is becoming a lot more personal than what is designed in an organizational book.

Companies need to be open to talent. They need to look at their culture. They have to look at their people. They have to look at what they should and want to attract into their organizations. People on the flip side, I can't stress it enough, need to recognize what they want and where they want to do it. That's where you find a match between a person and a company. I encourage everyone to take 1 or 2 steps to make their job search more strategic. Companies, make your talent sourcing a little bit more strategic and open it up maybe to pools that you might not have thought of before. There are a lot of great people in the market looking for good and honest work within a good culture.

Laureen, thank you very much for taking the time to be here with me and with the audience. I appreciate all of your wisdom and thoughts. I hope to get you back here soon because I have way more many questions to ask in a second interview if you're interested.

I would love to. Thank you so much.

Everybody, thank you very much for taking the time. I hope to see you back here soon. Have a great day.

Important Links

• Entrata
• LinkedIn - Entrata
• We Are Apartments
• The Challenger Sale
• Atomic Habits
• The Silent Patient
• Becoming Bulletproof
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Disruptor

About Laureen Kautt