Gary O'Neal is Director of Recruiting for Austin HR. Gary is a recruiting and hiring consultant. His mission is to help business leaders hire more than their fair share of top talent and beat the competition by building superior teams. Gary has seen the inside story of how recruiting and hiring happened inside of well over 200 companies. He’s led high-performance recruiting teams in both agency and corporate environments and has over 20 years of experience in recruitment. He’s been close to near 20,000 hires. Gary’s industry background is vast and includes software, IT, banking, public, semiconductor, engineering, manufacturing, sales, marketing, and environmental companies. His experience spans all levels, including C-level executives, senior management, technical leadership, high-performance professionals, as well as support staff.   Listen in for actionable advice on re-entering the job market as it is today.   Key Takeaways: [:57] Marc announces his first audience survey on what demographic listens to the podcast, what you like, and what you would like to hear about in the future. Please take the survey at CareerPivot.com/PodcastSurvey. This will redirect you to a SurveyMonkey page. Marc will keep the survey going through 2017 to hear from you. [1:30] Marc has released the audio files to the publisher for his audiobook Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life, and believes it may be ready for purchase. Marc will send an email blast to CareerPivots Insights email subscribers once he knows more. Or check its availability at CareerPivot.com/Repurpose-Your-Career/ [2:07] Marc explains the schedule. Last episode was an interview with Mac Prichard of Mac’s List. This episode is an interview with Gary O'Neal with Austin HR, on how he would search for a job. There will be no episode on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day, but Marc’s favorite episode of 2017 will be re-released on Tuesday, January 2nd. [4:47] Marc welcomes Gary to Repurpose Your Career. [5:00] Gary has made big career pivots, himself. He started as a NASA software engineer, then joined a startup as director of professional services for IT, working with large companies. Gary helped grow the startup to almost 2,000 employees in seven years using a hiring architecture that he helped create. Sprint bought them in 1997. [5:58] Gary saw that more than anything else he had done, helping a startup hire more than their fair share of top talent made a material difference. He started his own company, Cool Hires, outsourcing recruiting departments for companies. The market turned ugly in 2009 and Gary went back into IT for a while, and now is at Austin HR. [6:44] Gary spoke at Launch Club recently about how he would conduct a job search, which inspired Marc to invite him to Repurpose Your Career. [7:00] Gary starts with why he would follow a specific path to finding a job. He has recruiting experience as a consultant in at least 200 companies. Rarely does a company hire very well. So the traditional approach many people use to find a job and companies use to hire is really broken. Most people look for openings online and apply. [8:07] In most of the companies Gary has helped, most of the resumes never get seen. No one has the time to devote to them. So junior people without experience around the job or the background experience to fill it filter the resumes. No one gets hired without talking to the hiring manager. Everything and everybody else gets in the way of that. [10:19] People are afraid to break the rules for hiring. The rules are not there to serve you. People hire people. Connect with the hiring manager. Forget the rules. Step 1. Get really crystal clear on the job you want to have. What problems do you solve and what role will you fill? Don’t go to market being open to ‘lots of possibilities.’ [13:00] Align your background with where you are most likely to be accepted, with what the opportunities are, with what you are likely to get paid for, and