Mitch King

Freelance Talent Acquisition Lead

Mutinex

Mutinex is a Startup SaaS MarTech platform that provides the leading brands the ability to better measure their ROI and predict future ROI. 

As the only member of the TA team, I act as our internal recruiter to find the right people for our roles across all departments here in Australia and in the USA. I've recruited roles in Leadership, Data Science, Software Engineers, DevOps, Product Managers, Product Designers, Sales and Customer Success roles in Australia and the USA. 

I also lead our hiring systems and processes, doing things like:

- Setting up an ATS (PinPoint)
- Create job ad templates and employer brand content
- Employee Engagement Surveys
- Establish salary bands with Head of Finance
- Hiring Manager Interview training

Head of Talent Acquisition

Hey Mitch

Helping people fix their resumes, LinkedIn profiles and coach them through job searching from how to approach companies you want to work for to practice interviews and salary negotiations.

I’ve been placing people in jobs in StartUps, Tech & Creative companies for 15 years and in that time I’ve seen thousands of resumes & interviewed thousands of people.

I see a lot of bullsh*t advice out there from influencers who appear to have never actually been in the hiring seat, yet have all the hacks and ways to beat the system, especially the infamous ATS. 

I’m here to help you understand what the people on the other side of your resume and LinkedIn profile are looking for without gimmicks and magic beans.

Job Search & LinkedIn Coach

Thirst Creative

A short term contract while I was taking a short break, I worked as an embedded Talent Acquisition Manager, I ran searches and screening for Senior Account Manager and Copywriter positions. Both roles filled with under 1 week of my time spent, resulting in a much more cost effective and transparent process for all.

Linktree

With more funding came more growth, including growing our talent team from 1 to 12 and Linktree’s total headcount from 18 to 300 in 2 years.

I was promoted into the Head of TA role, remaining a hands on recruiter while managing the team across Australia and the USA, as well as external talent partners.

I started as employee 18 and the first recruiter & first person in HR at Linktree while they were a bootstrapped startup.

Series A came soon after and so did rapid growth. I would manage around 15-20 roles at a time, headhunting screening and interviewing Software Engineers, Data engineers / analysts / scientists, Growth & Content Marketers, Product and Digital Designers, CTO, Head of Growth Marketing, Head of Content, Legal, Head of P&C, Group Product Managers, Customer Support and more.

After hiring I would run onboarding and learning and social events during the early days of Covid & remote working.

I filled approximately 45 roles in the first 9 months and as the user base growth continued so did hiring with my role expanding to grow and manage the TA team.

Senior Talent Acquisition Manager

Become Recruitment Australia & New Zealand

Overseeing the day to day running of our Melbourne office and launching our Auckland office while recruiting Senior roles in both cities. Established a team of 3 in Auckland and grew the Melbourne team to 10.

Roles include General Managers, UX & UI Leads, CX, Creative Directors, Group Account Directors, Heads of Digital, Head of Studio, Digital Leads, Design Directors & Strategists.

I enjoy recruiting challenging roles and with over 10 years experience in recruiting for the creative markets in Sydney, Melbourne and now Auckland, my goal is to give clients and candidates a better understanding and instead reach to the best and most suitable talent and roles.

Business Director

After 9 years at Become Sydney, I relocated to head up the running of our Melbourne office. Creative Recruitment specialist, I focus on long-term relationships with clients and candidates rather than high volume, "one-off" placements. 

Roles that I and my team recruited for include:

- Account Service
- Designers - Digital, Product, UX, UI, Motion
- Software Engineers/Developers
- Creative Copywriters, Content writers & Art Directors
- Strategists - Branding, Digital & Content
- Social Media Managers & Strategists
- Product Managers, Producers and Project Managers
- Digital Marketers
- SEO, SEM and PPC specialists
- Dev ops
- Creative technologists

I've recruited for these roles within Startups, Digital & Creative Agencies, Design Studios and in house roles.

Become Recruitment Australia

Managing the freelance desk at Become (formerly creativepeople) while continuing to recruit for a range of permanent roles for many of Sydney's best Design, Advertising, Digital and in house studios. I also work closely with the my colleagues in sharing candidates, roles and industry knowledge to make sure we find the best fit for our clients and candidates for any role. 

I have provided the following freelancers to Studios across Sydney: Print and Web designers, UI & UX Designers, Finished Artists, Retouchers, Account Executives through to Account Directors, Copywriters, Digital Producers & Project Managers, Art Directors and Teams, Front End Developers, After Effects designers, 3D modellers and more

Senior Recruitment Consultant

CreativePeople

Recruiting permanent and freelance roles for the Design, Advertising and Digital Industries in Sydney across freelance and permanent positions. Designers, Finished Artists, Copywriters, Account Managers, Art Directors, Front and Back End Developers. Creative people rebranded to become in 2010.

Recruitment Consultant

If my Grandmother was still alive and asked what I did for work, I’d say that I help companies find good people to employ.

My beliefs on how to do this are quite simple and revolve around transparency and authenticity.

I’m an advocate for creating safe spaces for people to be their true selves at work through open conversations. 

I specialise in hiring for tech companies, startups & digital/ creative agencies. I’ve placed Software Engineers, Talent Acquisition, HR/P&C, Product Managers, Product Designers, Marketers, Executives and Heads of Departments.

The ramblings of my LinkedIn posts are my own thoughts and should rarely be taken too seriously.

Mutinex is a SaaS MarTech platform that provides the leading brands the ability to better measure their ROI and predict future ROI. 

I act as our internal recruiter to find the right people for our roles across all departments here in Australia and in the USA. I've worked on Leadership, Data Science, Software Engineers, Product Managers, Product Designers, Sales and Customer Success roles.

I also lead our hiring systems and processes, doing things like:

- Set up new ATS (PinPoint)
- Create job ad templates and employer brand content
- Employee Engagement Surveys
- Establish salary bands with Head of Finance
- Hiring Manager Interview training

When you announce a new role on LinkedIn, it suggests one of their gifs to use in your announcement.

But there are other times on LinkedIn where the gifs can be used, so I've gone to the trouble of making a few templates for you.

I also wanted to show off my advanced animation skills, only using Canva to make these highly advanced and extremely polished animations.

Companies often look for resilience as a trait when hiring.

Basically they don’t want people who will leave the second times get tough.

But I believe that in order to be resilient, you have to go through tough times to build that resiliency up.

If you grew up rich, went to private school, then a top university paid for by your parents, straight into a top grad program at big, rich companies you’re likely very smart with a great education but you may not have had your resiliency tested yet.

Companies should look at people that have been through tough times before if they want resilient people.

Migrants have been through way more in their life. 

Parents, especially Mothers could tell you a few stories about toughness.

Find someone who used to be a Nurse or a door to door salesperson or a cleaner at a 24 hour McDonald’s. They’ve suffered abuse that you don’t see in waterfront offices.

Or look for resiliency in someone like me, who lived with my inlaws for over a year.

I might have been through the toughest times out of anyone on that list.

My English and Spanish friends and Football fans in general please take my advice.

Take Monday off. 

Don't try and plan to watch the match and then go to work, there's only a couple of scenarios:

1. Your team wins and then you'll be calling in sick to celebrate
2. Your team loses and you'll be an absolute misery to be around and the exact opposite of productive
3. Your team wins and you'll be torture to be around - especially Monday but also for the next 4 years
4. You don't support either team but you're not usually awake at 5am on a Monday so you'll be spending a fortune on coffees and spend half your day trying to find secret spots to nap

Especially the 2.5 million English recruiters living in Australia*, no candidates or clients want to speak to you at your manic high or your lowest low.

*Estimated

** 2.3 million of whom live in Bondi/Coogee

A little PSA from me but I have a feeling a few people may share my thoughts here.

If you connect with me on LinkedIn and then click message, it may suggest this message:

"Hi Mitch,

It's great to connect with you. How have you been?"

If you send me this message, I ain't replying. It's a template and at this stage you're a stranger sending me a template. You may as well be standing in Pitt St Mall handing me a flyer. 

I'm not here to collect template sending strangers as connections, what benefit does that serve me or you?

By all means say or ask something but not this template, not any template in fact.

PSA/Rant over, thank you for attending my Ted talk.

If you’re currently experiencing frustration with a boss, colleague or even a client, remember this:


They might not be the smartest.

They might not be the kindest.

They might not be the hardest working.

They might not make good decisions.

They might not take accountability for their bad decisions.

They might not be enjoyable to be around.



That’s it, that’s the reminder.

I’ve been asked this question a couple of times in the past few months on podcasts and at events:

“What’s your least favourite interview question?”

The one that always comes to mind is one of the most commonly asked ones; “tell me about yourself”.

The reason I don’t like it is because it’s too vague. Do you want me to tell you my whole life story over the next 35 minutes or do you want a narrative of my career summarised in 2 minutes?

Do you want to know that my Dad was a wharfy or my billings as an agency recruiter? I’ll happily tell you about my MVP season as a 15 year old basketballer if you’d like.

I think the question is often asked when people don’t know how else to start an interview or if they’re unprepared and want to buy time to read your resume while you speak.

But also, what is the answer going to tell you that affects your assessment? We have limited time in interviews so each question should aim to cover something about the role or company fit.

Maybe if story telling is a part of the role it’s fine and the question only needs to be tweaked to be more specific to be improved.

For example: “I’ve read your resume but would love to hear the story of your career, starting from 2008 can you give me the key achievements and reasons behind each role and company changed up to today? Don’t rush, 5 minutes or so would be great”

If you ask the question like that with specific requests, time limits and context, I bet you start to see improvements in the answers.

Remember that sometimes when you get bad answers it’s because you asked bad questions.

The bonus is performance based.

Me practicing my performance:

I was driving behind a car with those stick figure stickers on the window and my brain went “family stickers. Work family. We need work family stickers”.

So I put a few of my precious minutes aside to make these for you to give to your work family. 

For their notebooks, their laptops, even their office door if they are fancy enough to have an office door.

Work family stickers

Here's what the assassination attempt on Trump taught me about B2B sales.


Absolutely nothing but in totally unrelated news I've got a couple of new roles to fill at Mutinex so if you can like and even comment something random like your favourite movie or something less random like a suitable person for one of the roles, that might just lead to our ideal candidate seeing the post / ad and I will be very thankful for your help.

1. Contract Marketing Data Analysts, ASAP start for 3 months, $500-$600 a day, Sydney. SQL & Python primarily, ideally with Media/Marketing industry exposure. 

2. Marketing Science Partner, permanent, $120-$160k + super + equity, Sydney preferred but open to Melbourne. 

This team are Media Effectiveness Strategists/Consultants that make sure our customers get as much value as possible from our platform. William Marks will be your boss, big perk.

3. Senior or Staff Engineer working in our Enablement team, permanent, $150-$200k + super + equity, Sydney. 

More backend focused, node.js. Reports into Nik Zavgorodniy who was just named a big deal by B&T.

Slides into DMs are encouraged, referrals are requested, favours will be repaid.

I’m going to ask this question with zero judgement to your answer.

In fact I would expect many of you don’t want to share your answer which is totally ok.

Or many you’ll answer but fudge the numbers a little bit and that’s ok too.

It’s a safe space here and it’s just you and me talking, a couple of besties on a vape break.

Then I ask you “how often do you clean your work drink bottle?”

Let me know if you’re comfortable sharing your answer. And if you’re not comfortable sharing, maybe just give it a wash now and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you.

Or if you know someone that needs to wash theirs because you can see the mouth scum on their bottle from your desk, tag them in the comments.

I’m sure they won’t mind and won’t find that passive aggressive or embarrassing or report you to HR. 

P.S please don’t send me links to the self cleaning bottles unless you’re going to buy one for me.

Interviewer: “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?”

Me:

So many people list this as a skill, is it really so hard to manage these people?

I'd like to apologise to Shelley Johnson.

When she asked me to come on her Podcast, Shelley sent over a couple of questions and topics that we'd cover.

I'm not sure if we covered any of those topics, sorry Shelley 😂 

But it was - as always - a very fun chat and I've already had several messages from people who listened to the episode and related to our rants.

As per the laws of LinkedIn, link to episode in the comments.

If you use recruitment agencies but you’re not a recruiter, I want to run a little thought exercise with you.

Let’s pretend you are a recruiter and you are planning your day. Your fees are usually 15-20% of the placement salary.

You currently have 3 roles that you’re working on:

A) Client gave you a rushed brief, no set budget and you know at least one other recruiter is working the role. 17% fees.

B) Client gave you a detailed brief but it’s a bit of a unicorn they’re looking for. Clear budget but told you that 3 other recruiters were also briefed on the role. 20% fees.

C) Client has given you the role exclusively, spent 2 hours on the briefing and a clearly defined & realistic role and budget. 15% fees.


Now my question is in the poll but at the end of our time together, I just want I to remember your answer the next time you brief a recruiter.

At the halfway point of the year there’s something important that we should check in on.

Your New Year’s resolutions.

Did you stick to them?

No?

But did you give it a good go before you gave up?

Also no?

But will you do nothing for the rest of this year and wait until December 31st to make the same resolutions for next year?

There we go, that’s better.

See you in 6 months 👋

P.S how the &$%# is it July already!?

I want you to be really honest with yourself when you answer this question.

Your colleague writes this in slack:

“Their going over they’re to get there things”

You know what they mean but you see the mistakes, do you ignore the mistakes or point them out?




P.S the mistake in the poll question is intentional but I’d expect at least one person not to read this and correct me. Let’s see.

Mitch King on LinkedIn • 3 min read

I assume you don't like me

I'm a few months into my side hustle of job search coaching and fixing resumes have been the most frequently requested service / most confusing part of the job search process.

These are the 3 most common mistakes I've seen people make, not just with the people I've coached but the other 100,000 resumes I've seen*

I have no idea how many resumes I've actually seen but over 15 years, 30 a day (assume 220 working days a year), it's actually probably more than 100,000 which I've only just realised writing this and I'm now not sure what to do with this information.

#sundayscaries

Mitch King on LinkedIn • 1 min read

The most common resume mistakes

Which comes first, the job or the relocation?

I was speaking to a friend who is looking for a Senior Digital Marketer on the Sunshine coast (DM me if you're one and I can pass the role details on) and being a small market, they're wanting to know who there is locally but also who there is in other states of Australia that is looking to relocate. 

There's barrier to this on both sides.

You as a candidate can set your LinkedIn settings to Open to specific locations, but that's only visible to companies or recruiters with a LinkedIn recruiter licence.

Then you could be searching for roles in locations that you're interested in relocating to but most of us agree that LinkedIn doesn't do a great job of classifying roles. For example, I put "Talent Acquisition" and Sunshine Coast in the LinkedIn job search and the first result I got was registered psychologist followed by Boutique Stylist, Trainee at Grill'd & Store Manager at Lovisa.  

After a few of those search results not matching, you're unlikely to rely on that source regularly. 

So a company then is looking at candidates in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne but without that recruiter licence AND the fact that not everyone updates or maintains those open to work settings, how would you if that candidate in another city is ready and wanting to relocate without mass messaging them?

The first answer that comes to mind here is recruiters. 

Candidates getting in touch with recruiters in the locations you're looking to move to rather than currently living in and companies using those recruiters well. By well I mean using one recruiter exclusively with detailed job briefs and transparent, constant communication.

The recruiter is also likely to be already paying for that expensive recruiter licence and/or job slots in their fees, so those fees can start to look more reasonable the more you break it down.

LinkedIn has the platform to solve this better but job matching HAS to get better first and then I doubt it will ever be an accessible feature without paying for recruiter access, which is $10k + a year.

AI pendants like this are relatively new but there’s something I’m a little surprised by.

I haven’t been looking for it but I thought by now there’d be multiple workplace law cases with the recordings from the pendants as the key evidence.

Harassment, unfair dismissal down to gas lighting could all be proven if these things are recording every conversation.

There could also be some fascinating data from wearing these things, like percentage of time you spoke vs others.

Percentage of vocabulary that is positive, negative and curse words.

Maybe it could even help some people realise they’re rude at cafes or they speak to their juniors the way they hated being spoken to as a junior.

But I think the biggest appeal of these devices would be during a meeting and being able to whisper an Uber eats order into it.

Is anyone using one? And has anyone already seen them cause issues from recording others without their permission?

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