they call it Cloud centers of excellence um they wanted centers of excellence in Dallas over in uh Hungary one in Reading here in the UK they wanted one in Chennai in India um and and other location Singapore was a location we looked at as well so I did a a numerous different kind of projects with Nokia but also worked with a company called kuk manala I helped them build a a center of excellence in Milan for robotic assistant uh which was probably the most technical I've ever done what are some in demand skills right now in SEO and AI that people either can lean in towards more that they can kind of grow their business out of most of the opportunities that you'll find will be through Linkedin um and of course through checking your emails and whatnot what are some good ways for candidates to stand out in the interview phase especially when it comes to SEO and AI cand [Music] hey guys what's up and welcome back to the channel and welcome back to another episode where I'll be interviewing experts and entrepreneurs from around the SEO World in today's episode I've got a bit of a special guest for you he's my business partner over at seo. careers he's been involved in the it and AI recruitment game for nearly 15 years now he's worked with some of the biggest brands putting some of the biggest AI teams globally and he's now working in SEO digital PR and AI with me recruiting some of the biggest jobs from around the UK us and Europe please welcome to the channel George Sunland ladies and gentlemen hello Charles how are you I'm doing good thank you how are you mate yeah very good thank you good to be on the uh on the channel um yeah really really good to kind of uh talk about what we've been doing recently and uh how we can help the the SEO Community what we've been up to and uh yeah I like everything you've been doing on the channel so look forward to it I appreciate it a lot so do you want to kind of jump in with it and kind of give people a bit of an explanation on how you got started in Recruitment and eventually kind of working your way now to SEO and and AI Recruitment and you you built an whole AI team at Nokia as well yeah I've built a couple of AI teams actually um these guys were more guys and girls were more on the side of kind of developing the solutions from from scratch um in Nokia for example artificial intelligence application was on managing the network you know with with different loads on the network how you know they can spread load across different components within the mobile core that sort of thing but how did I get started in in recruitment overall um I I was actually an IT guy back back in in my college days I studied it I'm I'm a massive nerd when it comes down to it I love computers I love gaming I'm very kind of of uh very keen on it overall as a concept and back in college I was really interested in web development was kind of your front end back end I liked PHP but also I think like a lot of developers the front end stuff was very interesting to me HTML and CSS to to be kind of the main two um but yeah so I I did that for two years um left college and I applied to be a web developer uh at a local agency where I lived at the time um and in the interview um it was a I was interviewing with a manager or a business owner I should say who had two different businesses at the time one was a web development consultancy and the other was a recruitment consultancy in it after going to the interview we got talking um we we hit it off really well and to put it quite simply what I think happened is the owner the business owner at the time noticed how I I've always grown up in in in businesses and working for companies where I face people I'm talk to people um so he thought why don't you give recruitment a try why don't you take a shot at this I web development's interesting but it might not be as uh stimulating to put it nicely as as you'd like it to be so I went straight into recruitment from there I took the I accepted the offer that he made made me after that first interview um and went straight into things initially that was an apprenticeship um which is is kind of you don't really hear much about apprenticeships in in recruitment but here it is you know um they needed staff for you know good price and I was there and I learned quite a lot I was there for about a year um I was supporting digital agencies at the time that was very much kind of there more focused on web development than content um they were their sales and their services was all about how can we make your website look really cool that's pretty much as far as it went recruiting web developers infrastructure people to make sure the back ends all supported um and everything in between including sales product management that sort of thing um after that I'd done it for a year and I was in a situation where I needed to move on move upwards I I achieve my uh I can't remember what level it was but another it kind of qualification at the time um and I moved to a consultancy which I ended up staying at for about eight years um I started off as a a sourcer someone finding CVS uh interviewing people and then handing it off to the more senior recruiters to speak to clients um and that's really where it started where I kind of got into what would you call the the the Hot Topics in the industry um at the time it was was Internet of Things Big Data Cloud was only just kind of coming out then uh the the the idea of cloud Tech was really new so that was super hot um and I started working with clients that were global companies real kind of heavy-hitting Blue Chip clients that were on the kind of uh the Forefront of developing new technology which I loved being a geek throwing back to kind of where I come from at college gr growing up as an IT nerd a bit of a geek um that was perfect for me um during that time I had the opportunity to work for most of those years with Nokia which was some of the best experience I've had great company I worked for at the time um and initially it started as a cloud they call it Cloud centers of excellence um they wanted centers of excellence in Dallas over in uh Hungary one in Reading here in the UK um they wanted one in Chennai in India um and and other location Singapore was a location we looked at as well um so we recruited heavily for them it was one of the biggest projects I ever did it was about I think 50 people in total um most of them were Cloud experts and we delivered it and I found myself in a scenario where I started the project I was sourcing CVS sourcing candidates and I finished the project pretty much directing it and kind of being responsible for speaking to the client making sure that you know everything's in line making sure we're delivering CVS at the right level that sort of thing um so after that project was completed really successful it's great for everyone at the time um they started venturing more into artificial intelligence um these were more the developers the coders kind of the the the techies that were creating artificial intelligence to manage networks rather than what we describe as chat GPT it was kind of more machine learning um so we had a few different roles then a lot of the roles were kind of senior positions where they were just discovering what what the potential of the technology was how we gonna we've got the idea we know what we want to do George can you go out and help us find people to actually execute on this um so I did a a numerous different kind of projects with Nokia um but also work with a company called kuk manala as well which is quite soon after I helped them build a a center of excellence in Milan um uh for robotic assistance uh which was probably the most technical project I've ever done and I think I can't remember which Rocky it was it might be Rocky 2 but you remember you know the robot that brings you a cup of tea kind of like you g gives Rocky breakfast that sort of thing that was what they were making making at the time um and there was a university in Milan which specialized in AI I was working with kukum and alter and we ended up recruiting a team of like eight to 10 people um that were specialized in hardware and software to create this this robotic assistant same again was very technical stuff these guys were creating everything from scratch um and that was another successful delivery so that's kind of my main experience in AI so far um it's something I was doing for about four or five years before I went into the more more corporate world you could say of solution architecture and service driven business yeah for sure so you talked about a lot of different skill sets there what are some in demand skills right now in SEO and AI that people either can lean in towards more that they can kind of grow their business out of or uh candidates can lean more into that they can grow their potential earnings and stuff from their salary right yeah and it's with SEO of course it's based on content it's based on on language um it's what tools can you use on a day-to-day basis to to help you be more efficient that's kind of what it blls down to um a lot of people are doing this I I think the the number one issue is people aren't really understanding how to present it properly in their CVS and kind of how to communicate that to potential hiring managers companies looking for people um but of course sign up to different um different AI platforms different versions of chat gbt we all know there's kind of like seven plus different versions out there at the moment of these kind of language models um play with them practice with them um work with them try and if if you're in a situation where you're not using them in your day-to-day work do something that that we call evangelization where go to work and be the person that's driving the adoption of AI um that can be really really good to have in your CV if if you were the person that was responsible for helping a company transition into AI you can really scale your career very quickly and you might find yourself leaning out of SEO slightly and into kind of Consulting around this this AI stuff um but yeah the the the biggest thing is practice even if it's at home just doing stuff for person projects um and communicate it on your CV make sure you've got some bullet points some communication around what platforms you've used how long you've used them um it's always good to give you a rating out of five for example this is the best thing I'm really good at chat GPT Gemini I'd say I'm more of a three out of five um and that really kind of excites hiring managers because a lot of these guys um AI is something they read in the paper or they see on LinkedIn or you know it's it's it's not a topic that is currently being acted upon at the moment so yeah it's it's all about using it as much as you can in day-to-day life and communicating it properly getting getting kind of prepared for it what what personal traits would you say seos could improve upon so that they could get an increased salary as well because I know that there's a lot of seos are kind of naturally introverted which obviously leads to even not potentially asking for an increase of wage or asking for a promotion and things like that but even outside of that is there you know communication skills writing skills personal development skills confidence skills all of those kind of things do seos generally when you're speaking to them need to be more present and focused on those things yeah there's always a divide um you get the more entrepreneurial people that are you know they that you can see they have a natural knack for business they communicate well um they kind of they treat everything as a project in their lives they they know how how to really kind of manage their dayto day um but then there's the other side which is something I'm I'm very experienced of speaking to people like this which is the developer it's kind of the the developer style person where it's like yes I'm an introvert I spend my weekends kind of relaxing I like to spend time on my own doing what I do on a weekend playing video games and kind of spending time on your own is is it's really good um those people yes it it is is it's be more extroverted in your professional life you don't have to do it personally everyone has kind of their social battery drain some of it in your work life make sure your LinkedIn is up to date make sure you've got a a photo on there a professional looking photo um it sounds really straightforward but the amount of candidates that I see that don't have their socials in order on LinkedIn which is the only place they need to on a professional level maybe X Twitter as well um is is astounding so that just make sure you've got everything in order in your professional life you don't have to be tweeting every day or doing LinkedIn articles about what you found in x y and Zed um but make sure you're present make sure you're you're there you're checking your messages um most of the opportunities that you'll find will be through Linkedin um and of course through checking your emails and whatnot but yeah you guys you're in marketing um apply what you apply to a business or a website apply that to your CB and your career and you will see the same level of growth 100% And it's the good thing is like everyone who's in SEO has the potential to do that because they're already doing it for their clients or the businesses they work for the their clients um so yeah it's all about marketing just Market yourself rather than your service yeah and prove your personal branding and things right and now for a quick message from from our sponsor search intelligence if you're looking for digital PR campaigns what you're about to see should impress you do you remember this campaign it was all over the news it is the most intelligent Royal campaign with over 100 links generated in the world's biggest online Publications this is one of the most viral PR campaigns of 2021 this is how we've done it the methodology was pretty simple we looked at the Qs World university rankings for the institutions attended by key members of the royal family to discover which Royal is the brightest of all Mega marle came out on top followed by Kate Middleton and Prince William we put these findings in a press release and sent it to mainstream media and journalists who write about Royals from Russia to the UK the US Vietnam and Japan this story got massive coverage Landing over 100 links and created a massive buzz on social media simple research but a great story that journalists love to write about out I hope this will put you on fire and will give you inspiration so how are the best agencies and Brands retaining their SEO and AI teams right now because there's a quite a large kind of churn rate between employees and things and even if you go into an SEO agency a lot of people tend to find that they kind of outgrow that agency quite fast because of all the things that they're learning and adapting and moving on with and stuff so that churn rate kind of feels naturally High what are the best agencies and Brands doing to hold on and retain those those um those employees so there are kind of like the three main pillars of of retaining people um you have kind of AI um well sorry AI people um that need to they're working on new technology they need to have the ability to keep up with the Ever Changing super quick moving industry that they're in um make sure that you give them a budget make sure manager has a budget to give them new tools for them to test new versions of the models that have come out um which is is super important um if people feel like their their value is increasing whilst they're inside business they're not going to leave if you have them on a a certification and this leads into kind of the the other side of things but if you have certifications or Learning and Development plans they are so important for retaining people um if if you can get someone on a yearlong course in in some kind of AI that with whatever provider you you feel is necessary at the time you're probably going to have that candidate for a year let's be honest that employee is going to stay with you um second to that there's benefits this is it's different for each manager or director business owner but work from home is a real big thing at the moment with the the pandemic and everything that happened people want to work work from home now um the amount of candidates I speak to on a day-to-day basis that are on the market because the work from home policy has changed is crazy I know businesses that are recruiting people for the same salary that they were on before but just because they provide extra flexibility so there's no actual Financial goal or Target or or incentive for the candidate it's just the fact that oh yeah they can work from home as much as they used to so that's a really important thing and that obviously rela back to the the course thing make sure you've got Learning and Development offerings maybe sometimes these Learning and Development platforms will give credits for other courses so in your professional life you might have ai courses but you might also want to learn Spanish you know you you might have access to things that can improve the rest of your life and and that's a really good thing as well um people like the financial incentives obviously um I'd always recommend yearly salary reviews if if your your business is growing if you're able to optimize your business better in the terms of headcount because of the use of AI make sure the people that are using that AI platform are benefit benefiting too and it's kind of your your business is is you're bringing them up with your business let's put it that way um and finally there's there's kind of the one of the easiest things to to retain good candidates is good managers is is making sure you mentioned it earlier some people are introverted um is the the is the guy or girl or whatever are they in a in a situation at the moment where they could be good managers do I need to grow this person into a manager maybe just ask them would you rather be a single point of contribution and we'll put you as a principal SEO specialist rather than a SEO team lead that kind of thing um communicate with your employees they will tell you what they want um HR can help out massively in this obviously I know a lot of agencies might Outsource HR or have kind of uh you know people that aren't focused on Talent internally um but think outside of the box as a business owner kind of how can I make sure that I'm retaining these people what what do they want sit them down in a meeting and say right this year what do you want what are your personal goals how can we help you improve in your personal life oh I want to you know I want to get a mortgage or I want to learn this new thing or you know I want to relocate and and just really try and um cater to them as much as you can within within reason so what are some good interview questions for agencies and Brands to be asking potential candidates especially when they're trying to identify talent in SEO and AO so there's this um there's open questions and closed questions which is something I'd apply to to anything there are huge range of specific questions you can ask but there is the way of asking them which is most important um instead of asking do you use AI platforms because you're going to get yes yes I do say how do you use AI platforms and then they're going to go they're GNA answer that question by going on a managed tangent about their day-to-day life how they build kind of queries and make sure make sure every question you ask a candidate within reason of course is is as open as it can be uh the interview the the first part of the interview should be about the the the owner or the manager explaining what they're looking for what the business does what the goals of the role are what problem does this candidate solve for our business that kind of thing but then the next 45 minutes in that one hour interview the candidate should be speaking all the time um the the less you speak as a hiring manager the better um obviously the way to do that is with open questions give them the opportunity to speak um ask them for their opinion on things rather than if they use things say h we use these two different platforms they're quite similar which one do you prefer and why and then you you'll get what you need and and with those open-ended questions you'll understand how your candidates think how they attack problems how they import how they communicate importantly how they kind of break things down could I put this person in front of a client if my account manager was Ill that week that kind of thing um so yeah just try and keep your questions as as open as possible I want to kind of jump over to the other side of the interview table and ask as a candidate obviously it's kind of quite daunting going into most interview rooms especially when you look down the hallway and see 50 more clones of yourself kind of all in the same suit and things you know looking uh looking just as petrified as you are really when you're walking into waiting room exactly yeah and you're just kind of trying not to make eye contact with each other and things and stuff right what are some good ways for candidates to stand out in the interview phase especially when it comes to SEO and AI candidates obviously with AI it's a bit easier because people are have got specialty or they don't but with SEO it is more Broad and generally a lot of people are going into more generalized roles than you know specific like link building or on page or digital PR roles they're they're more General General executive roles how can they specifically kind of stand out in the your interview questions yeah I'd say uh Espionage maybe home alone uh the Home Alone method with some laxatives in the waiting room and people's coffees that might work um no um practice makes perfect with interviews you you're always going to have good ones you're always going to have bad ones um don't let the bad ones switch you off accept as many interviews as you can interview with businesses that you're unsure about because you can you can find out things that that you may not have known from their website or from whichever recruiter spoke to at the time um when it comes to how you act in those interviews how you answer questions it's very very much based on the requirements that that you're looking to fill that's it's a real tough one and that's why I say practice makes perfect because each interview is going to be unique not every manager is going to be looking for an identical candidate the the interview you Ace you might apply method a to the last interview you had and it was amazing and apply that that same kind of method to your next interview and it completely fall over um I think it's important to remember on both sides as a candidate and a client that you're dealing with people um people are not binary they are people have good days they have bad days you have good interviews you have bad interviews obviously there are there are methods to answer questions you know the star method that sort of thing where um if if you answer questions in a structured way you describe the outcome the conclusion what you learn from it that's always a good thing to do as well because say for example if if you're not if the first interview isn't with the hiring manager it gives whoever's interviewing it maybe HR or even a pier it gives them a really good idea of kind of like this person is quite intelligent they are uh pointing me in the direction that that they want me to go in and as an interviewer that saves me a job so in terms of career advice for people who are looking to have get to a higher salary position what kind of advice would you give to people is it about personal brand is it about skill sets is it about communication is it about going and interviewing with as many job opportunities is about moving jobs regularly what what are the fundamentals that people in SEO can do so that they can try and achieve a higher salary and also be worthy of said higher salary as well yeah um it it so when it comes to higher salaries it's going to completely depend on the the requirements or the budget of the the hiring company obviously if you are looking for the jobs that pay far more you have to demonstrate the fact that you are the top five% of people that have applied for that position and you have to justify your Worth to whoever is looking to recruit you um that's where you have to use kind of quantifiable uh measures of return on investment for anyone that's interviewing you making sure that you know you you can demonstrate the fact that you are looking for more money you they know that they they know that you're could to get an increase but you you are going to make good return on that investment um the good thing about SEO is it's a very quantifiable industry um there are percentages there are stats we've got HRS um we've got semrush we have all of these different platforms which can provide information and data about our previous projects um use those as much as possible when it comes to increasing your salary how should you treat your jobs I wouldn't say moving too often is a good thing um quite often when I'm speaking to hiring managers and this is for permanent employment um when I speak to hiring managers one of the most common uh issues or or things that will turn them off a candidate is someone who's moved once a year that's a a classic requirement or bit of feedback is looks like a great person great CV but they've moved once a year this means in 12 months time I'm going to have to be replacing this person because they've you know put their CV online and and found something new it's not very attractive I would recommend at least two to three years in each role you have and you're going to scale your career very well um the on the other end of that try not to stay in places for for too long I mean the once you're looking at Double Digit years and that kind of thing it's it's you're likely going to find a massive increase from moving um because it it's no surprise to anyone that moving does give you a larger salary increase than staying um but the the lot there's like an equilibrium there's a balance and I'd say the perfect thing is for years if you've been in a company for four years the hiring manager knows whoever ran this business that you were working for has assessed you to the point of no return that they have trusted you with everything maybe there's some Career Development internally where you've become a senior or a team league and the hiring manager at the time isn't going to mind stretching the budget for that kind of person the amount of conversations I have with hiring managers where they're like oh this person's you know that their their five or 10K over what we'd be looking to pay it's it's a really easy discussion to have you say right that's fine but this person's been in there the last business for four years they've been promoted twice um the Val the business before was clearly getting a lot of value out of them um you know this person can I hate to use the cliche hit the ground running kind of thing um and and yeah that's that's that's out that also recruiters can help you scale your salary um part of what we do is kind of negotiate on their behalf we'll look for people's expectations and we'll map them to different jobs um if there's a real kind of star candidate and they're looking for X amount of money um there's something we can do which is kind of like a speculative conversation with employers saying right this person is looking for X amount of money this is their experience this is why they're worth that um and I think it'd be really easy for you to hire them if if you provide that that solves a lot of problems for business owners that are have headamp you know people that are looking to repl someone maybe maybe someone handed in their notice in last month and they haven't had the chance yet to register a job and speak to a lot of recruiters um yeah additionally to that I I can't stress how important it is to be open to Opportunities um be open and honest about what your expectations are but always pick up the call let recruiters know that's fine this is this is the money I'm looking for would they be interested and don't close conversations rather than saying no say yes but and and add your requirements there and you you're going to get a lot more opportunities to consider a lot more hiring managers in front of you which is is the law of averages so make friends with your recruiters when you're on the call as much as possible right go go down the pub pint if possible with yeah yeah yeah yeah coffee or beer pick your poison kind of thing talk about who's recruiting at the moment um you know if if that if you see a business that has four jobs that similar to what you're looking for the chances are if you could be the fifth reach out to the recruiter reach out to the business own and say I notice you're you're recruiting quite a lot at the moment in the SEO team or the content writing team um I'm I'm on the market this is what I'm looking for are you interested it's easier with a biddan with a recruiter um but uh yeah those direct conversations can happen as well how much does the Creator economy kind of play into salary roles and demand and things like that right does it kind of correlate where if you have got a bigger brand on LinkedIn and Twitter and maybe even YouTube and things like that obviously without the controversial nature that a lot of people achieve those big profiles with you want to keep it more PC and lowkey right um does that actually augment your salary significant higher would it be advisable for people to start posting memes every day on X and Linkedin and trying to get that that follow account up yeah I I I think it I think it's important it's not the the beginning and the end of course um I'd say it's more relevant to the leadership roles and kind of the director positions if if you're in a scenario where you can attract candidates and kind of attract people or or clients potentially to a business with your socials it's it's it's massive um for those kind of partner roles C level positions director of this that whatever um yeah having having good socials can be the extra bullet point or the extra thing which which gets you the job over the the next person that doesn't have it um entry level it's good to have a channel say if if you are a junior candidate you're a grad it's the same thing it's it's if you're looking for that first position your CV probably doesn't have a lot on it um your your job in a pub serving kind of pints on Friday night isn't as relevant as what you've been doing on Twitter your opinions on stuff maybe maybe you've helped out on a project you've contributed to something or um you you've done some I know people hate it kind of free work or some internship stuff um that so it's each end of the spectrum super important in the middle not as much I'd say I'd also say it's a bit more important for specific roles like digital PR and things and stuff right if you can walk into walk into a digital PR agency and say look I've documented my journey of doing marketing or doing X Y and Z and being able to get a 100,000 followers on Tik Tok or something like that genuinely they are a bit more impressed than you know the average intern that they're going to be interviewing and things right soand it depending on the depending on the specialty right to to use kind of SEO terminology they're trust signals aren't they for for any kind of willing employer that is trust and Authority that you're demonstrating to someone where right I I speak to the these journalists are people that I've worked with for the past five 10 years um they connect with me on a personal level and throughout my career like kind of I've worked with them directly rather than them working with the company that I'm with um and and there's there's massive value in that networking is good in any kind of job you go into um it's just if you're looking for that kind of internal promotion it's not as relevant if you're looking to move sideways or maybe you know in a a m midlevel role is is not as important um but yeah um people especially love if if if you can be a technical candidate or a specialist or um something where you don't interface with clients and you're able to demonstrate that that is potential that you have and you are a good communicator throws back to this kind of introvert versus extrovert thing where if you can demonstrate that if if you can talk to clients you can communicate well you can tell a good story you can break down complex SEO uh kind of Concepts and ideas to business owners that aren't quite familiar um it's just going to be an additional uh plus to your profile it's going to make you more hirable you're worth more money and and those hiring managers those directors will see that value with the right recruiter of course um the way that any good recruiter would do that is make sure that that is part of the introduction when I'm speaking to a manager if the socials are really sharp for a candidate I'll say you need to check out the socials as well by the way because this person's really good and it's the the difference between getting an interview or or not in some cases well I appreciate you coming M I think you gave away a lot of tips there for people to hopefully earn more money with SEO right um is there anywhere people can find you online yes you can go to my uh my Twitter which is GS recruit AI um or you can go find me on LinkedIn George Sunderland um which uh yeah you can shoot me a message if you need any help I'll see you guys in the next video peace