Jason Wachtel With JW Michaels & Co.

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by onpay Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to support our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Atlanta Business Radio, we have Jason Wachtel with JW Michaels & Co. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Wachtel: [00:00:44] Thank you, Lee. Nice to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about J.W. Michaels. How are you serving, folks?

Jason Wachtel: [00:00:52] Well, thank goodness we are extremely busy. J.w. Michaels We focus on placing high level attorneys, compliance, I.T. accounting and finance and HR professionals. And fortunately for us, the Atlanta market has been super, super busy. So it’s been a really good time to be in our industry helping great companies, higher grade fellow Georgians. Just a very tight labor market. So it’s a great time, but also a very challenging time due to the lack of talent in the marketplace.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] Well, do you mind if we chat a little bit about maybe both sides of that balloon? If you were an employer, what can you be doing to make your offer and firm the one that people want to work for? What are some of the things they can be doing to attract the right talent?

Jason Wachtel: [00:01:41] Sure. Well, of course, there’s a few things. Obviously, compensation is important, but there’s a new there’s a new aspect of what really employers have to be focused on. And that’s the hybrid model. You have to listen to your employees. And most employees are looking for a employment opportunity where obviously they’re compensated well, treated well, but also what’s the hybrid schedule? So the companies that are struggling and will continue to struggle are the companies that are requiring their employees to be in the office five days a week. Now there’s five days a week, there’s remote and there’s hybrid. And what we’ve seen is most of our clients have adopted some kind of hybrid schedule that could be two days, three days, four days a week in the office. But if you’re requiring your people five days a week and you think that paying your people a fair wage is going to be sufficient, you’re going to see that not only you’re going to lose some of the talent that you have, but you’re going not going to be able to hire great talent to help your firm grow. So really adapting that hybrid model, listening to your employees and sort of that separation of when the day is over, unless it’s an absolute emergency, you shouldn’t be reaching out, emailing your employees, because what happened before COVID, where people were technically on 24 seven. Now there has to be weekends where you don’t harass your people. And when the work’s done, at least if it’s not an emergency, you have to sort of turn it off for the day and sort of start again new the next day.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:03] Now, the folks that kind of embrace this hybrid model, doesn’t that mean that they’re kind of abandoning the remote model? Because if I work remotely, I can live anywhere in the world and still work for this company. But if I’m working in a hybrid environment, I have to be semi close to this employer so I can come in that one or two or three days a week.

Jason Wachtel: [00:03:24] Yes, you actually nailed a very good point. So most companies are requiring some kind of hybrid model. However, what you what you mentioned about if you’re working for a firm that’s remote, in theory, you could be living in Idaho and be and still continue to do your job in Atlanta. What’s really made the Atlanta job market, specifically Atlanta, so challenging? I mean, you have the Fortune 500 companies. Atlanta, Georgia is the out of the ten most populated states, has the lowest level of unemployment. And part of the reason is you have the Amazons, the Googles, the Facebooks of the world, where generally those are in Northern California or Seattle. They would only be able to hire people in that area. Now they’re saying we’re going to hire the best talent the market has to offer. So if you’re in Atlanta and you’re a technologist, let’s say, for example, we have no issue working remotely and working for us in Seattle. So what’s happened is you’re losing a lot of local talent in Atlanta to companies that are that are open to remote. So you’re making it that much more challenging in the market to hire people. So you really nailed a very good point.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:28] So now let’s look at it through the eyes of the employee. What could they be doing to be attractive to these these great employers that are out there looking for more and more talent? Well, what some of the things that employee can do so they get found online or however they get found.

Jason Wachtel: [00:04:48] Well, you know, obviously a very good networking tool is LinkedIn. I would encourage people to have a strong profile on LinkedIn. Part of when you’re looking for a new job or being as desirable as possible is networking. So networking going to networking events, you may have a neighbor down the street who is a senior employee at, let’s say, Home Depot, maybe be able to get some introductions that way, but also trying to broaden your skill set. So maybe before you were very narrow, focused in what you did and now with the way that the employment market is, there’s so many openings all over the place, you may go up to your boss and say, listen, I might just be an accounting. I’d like to do a little bit more of operations. So then you’re broadening, broadening your skill set, and that also makes you more desirable to your for your future employer.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:32] Now, what what’s something on LinkedIn that catches your eye? What are some kind of red flags or do’s or don’ts that people can be doing on LinkedIn that catch the eye of people like you?

Jason Wachtel: [00:05:42] Well, the first thing is LinkedIn has all these algorithms. So the first thing you got to do is you have to sort of fill out your profile to be a fully completed profile. Otherwise, you’re on the bottom of the algorithm. So LinkedIn has a sort of policy on what you need to do. You need to make sure your your profile is completely filled out. Second thing is you need to explain what you do in your description, whether that’s LinkedIn or Monster. You need to have a very broad understanding of what you do and really how do you articulate that? And then the thing is, no one really wants to see job hoppers. So if you’re taking a job every six months to a year, that’s generally a little bit of a red flag. When a recruiter or a Home Depot or a Coca-Cola is looking at you on LinkedIn or Monster when you’ve a new job every six months. So that’s not that’s not a positive. So really the first thing is sort of expanding it, expanding your description, making sure it’s very clear what your roles and responsibilities are. Another helpful thing is no matter what you’re doing, how you might have saved the company money, how you might have made the company money, and how you were able to deal with a tough problem and came up with a creative solution. Those are generally what employers and recruiters look for when they see a candidate that they get excited for to represent and send to their clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:55] Now, there was a lot of headlines about the great resignation and and a lot of people either saying, you know, pulling the ripcord and saying, okay, I’ve had enough, I have enough. I don’t have to work here anymore. I can just, you know, call it a day. But I’ve also been sensing that there’s a rethinking of that, where a lot of those folks that may be resigned or retired are saying, you know what? This is such a great job market. Maybe I’ll throw my hat back in the ring. Have you been seeing a trend in that direction where a lot of folks that had quit maybe have either got a little buyer’s dissonance where they said, hey, maybe I should shouldn’t have quit, or maybe it’s time to even maybe look in a different direction.

Jason Wachtel: [00:07:40] So what we’ve seen a lot of is, first of all, we think the resignation is only going to continue to to get stronger and stronger. So J.W Michaels and most recruiting firms in our in the industry we all had record years last year and as great as last year was this year is even off to a much, much better start as we can see from unemployment numbers. I think I read that the unemployment rate is as low as it was in 1968. So because of that, if you left the job market and you sort you retiring like, wow, I can make a lot more money if I go back to the to the to the employment world or you’re at your company and you’re seeing your friends making 20, 30, 40% more at other firms, you’re going to move. And that also increases to the great resignation. And then also when now that you might have been at a company for ten years, but you were commuting for 2 hours each way. Now, you may be able to work completely remote work for one of those companies that I mentioned in the earlier part of this interview. And that also increases the great resignation. So there’s a lot of factors that I just mentioned that helped come to create this perfect storm of why this great resignation has been so unbelievable that no one seemed before, but also why we really believe that this is going to continue for a much longer time.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:51] Now, are you seeing folks that had retired from kind of corporate jobs and going back as maybe contract workers?

Jason Wachtel: [00:08:59] We haven’t seen as much as that. I mean, one of the major impacts of the great resignation is there’s been a lot less companies leaning on contractors. They like to continue to lead on contractors. But with unemployment rates so low, contractors that were having a hard time finding full time jobs, they’ve been all scooped up by all these big companies or small companies. So although companies would prefer sometimes to use contractors, they’re just not a lot of talent in the marketplace because there’s so many full time jobs there. So I think if you were a career contractor, a lot of those career contractors have gone on full time roles just because of their demands and just because unemployment is so low, it’s really hard to find people that are having a hard time gaining employment when when unemployment is at a record low.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:47] Now, you mentioned that Atlanta is kind of a unique place in terms of the combination of enterprise. So many enterprise level, Fortune 500 headquarters here, as well as the the amount of educated workforce that we have and the great colleges that we have in universities that are kind of spilling into that. What are some of the other kind of characteristics you see that makes Atlanta a different market than maybe some of the other ones around the country?

Jason Wachtel: [00:10:19] I think you nailed a lot of the really key reasons, in my opinion, but I think even before the great resignation Atlanta has been is such a fast growing city. So you have all these Fortune 500 I think it’s over a dozen in in Atlanta or Georgia. You have unemployment so low in Atlanta and you have an area that was so thriving before COVID. And now it’s like, wow, you have all these companies, you have all these great people, all these great schools. As you mentioned, it’s like a perfect storm and affordable housing compared to the northeast. And so you take all those aspects. You create an environment where it’s like an unbelievable place for businesses to grow and thrive and employees to get great careers and really grow, not just professionally but financially.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:03] Yeah, I also think the diversity of the economy is is so vast that it’s different that we’re not a one industry town. There’s a lot of industries and in fact, some of the northern suburbs, if they were cities by themselves, they’d be a large city unto themselves. And there’s no kind of geographic boundary where a lot of the in the coasts obviously have the oceans. And there’s a limit to the size. But Atlanta is kind of in the center north of the state, so there’s plenty of room to just keep growing outward. And that’s you know, that’s what’s happening. You’re I mean, we have a film industry now that didn’t exist, you know, 20 years ago. And now it’s one of the top in the world.

Jason Wachtel: [00:11:44] You have a film industry of a major tech hub now in Atlanta. There’s a lot of things, as you mentioned, that are just created this unbelievable environment for talent and for employees to employers to want to relocate to Georgia to take advantage of that.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:58] Now, are you seeing young people wanting to move to Atlanta from other parts of the country because there is so much opportunity here?

Jason Wachtel: [00:12:06] We saw that before COVID and we’re continuing to see that after COVID. You know, generally, Atlanta was a much smaller version of Manhattan, but you had all if you went to University of Alabama, you go to grade school like Emory, Georgia, you know, Auburn, you all went everybody went to Atlanta. If you’re in the Midwest and Chicago was the hub Iowa, you’d go to Chicago and then you have New York. But what you’re seeing is a lot of people from the Northeast specifically because of the cost of living differences. You know, a lot of people have relocated down to Atlanta, companies have moved down to Georgia. And so you’re seeing a lot of younger people, for the reasons that I mentioned, have now made Georgia home, more so than, let’s say, in the last ten years.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:49] So now in your work, you do you work a kind of industry agnostic or do you have some niches that you’re are kind of known for sweet spot for your firm?

Jason Wachtel: [00:13:00] You know, in our headquarters in Atlanta, we’re really focused on accounting and finance, i.t. Supply chain and some human resources. That’s where our bread and butter has been for the last 15 to 20 years. So our clients are your fortune 500 companies, manufacturing companies, finance companies that sort of spread across what their disciplines are. But those are the areas that we focus on.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:26] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Jason Wachtel: [00:13:29] So right now, you know, it’s it’s crazy because generally as a firm grows, you need you always need to continue to have clients and new job orders. And so that’s always what the most important thing is. Now, however, because it is such an employee and employee driven market, you know, any great candidate that we come across, we can generally get two or three offers the next day for that, I would say within that week or two of that person. So any amazing candidate that is looking for the next great opportunity, we’d be so excited to talk to that person because we have so many great opportunities to discuss with them.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:02] And if somebody wants to learn more about your firm and get a hold of you or somebody on the team, what’s the website?

Jason Wachtel: [00:14:08] The website is WW GW Michael’s dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:13] Well, Jason, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jason Wachtel: [00:14:18] Thank you for having me in. My pleasure.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:20] All right. This is Lee Kantor Russell next time on the Atlanta Business Radio.