← Networth and Chill with Your Rich BFF
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- [00:00]
A
Most people can do the job, right? Yes. I'm so good at Excel, let me tell you, all my hotkeys that I can do and all these things, like, no one cares. The bigger part is, can I imagine myself working with you? If we got stuck at the airport together and we're chilling in the lounge and we're like, all right, we got three more hours before our flight leaves. Am I going to just want to just get up and just take an earlier flight because I don't like talking to you? Or am I going to be like, wow, I actually really enjoy your presence? And so the job search is an equation of time you spent versus the effort that you put in. If you can just focus on those two things, you will get a job guaranteed.
- [00:39]
B
What's up, rich friends? Welcome back to another episode of Net Worth and Chill with me, your host, Vivian Tu, AKA your rich BFF and your favorite Wall street girly. We're officially halfway through January, and what a year it has already been. It feels like an eternity. It has been 2026 for three months already. And. And I don't know about you, but it seems like everyone's hitting the vision boards extra hard this month. New job, new house, new routine, and of course, more money. Everyone is locked in on that new year, new me mentality for 2026. But how are you going to lock in that promotion? How are you going to turn your dream life into a reality? Thankfully, our guest today knows a thing or two about building your ideal career. He's inspired so many people to take control of their professional growth, offering resume, cover letter and job resources to his 3.5 million followers, helping them land interviews and offers. So if you're looking for a change in 2026, listen up, everyone. Please give a warm welcome to career coach and co founder of Juan Salting, Jerry Lee Woo.
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A
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
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B
Jerry, we're gonna have so much fun.
- [01:51]
A
Let's do it.
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B
But before we get started, you know, I have to ask. Fun little icebreaker. What is your 2026 New Year's resolution?
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A
Okay, so I have one professional, one personal. Personal is I want to get a six pack, Jerry. That's why I didn't eat any of the McDonald's I brought you.
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B
That's so rude.
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A
Rude?
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B
Yeah.
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A
That's inspiring.
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B
Viv, you are tempting me and saying, I'm going to have a six pack. I literally, as soon as you said that, I was like, jerry, you just brought me a bag of fries.
- [02:21]
A
Okay, see, listen, people are missing the context here. The context here is Viv and I were talking about McDonald's and what the best fast food was. She was. McDonald's is. Okay. I was like, McDonald's is. Everyone would be eating McDonald's if it were healthy for the taste.
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B
Yeah. Okay. I never disagreed. I thought it is tasty.
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A
That's true.
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B
You just can't have it every day.
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A
That's true. That's true. Well, hey, I got you your cheat meal for the week. Yeah.
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B
Oh, my God. I've been cheating, cheating meals for a while.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I don't need one more.
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A
That's true.
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B
Okay, now tell me the professionals.
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A
This winter, the cold and flu have been especially bad, and the culprits, well, they're everywhere.
- [03:01]
B
Literally, the.
- [03:02]
A
The entire planet is just packed with viruses that are infecting everything. And I mean literally everything, even other viruses. This week, unexplain it to me from Vox, those pesky microbes getting us sick and how they might also be helping us stay well. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Professional is we want to. So we're building one salting. And one of the cor goals of what we're trying to do is we're trying to build a system of how we can guarantee people jobs. We have. So we have about 1.6 million users worth of data where we can then back calculate for these types of users, for these types of backgrounds. This is how much effort that you need to get interviews, and on average, this is how many interviews that you need to get job offers. And if you don't land interviews, well, here are the reasons why we think you're where you can improve and let us give you a set of recommendations and perhaps even do it for you. If we can do that, in 2026, my life will be complete.
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B
I love that. And for folks who may not be familiar with Onesulting, what is it? What's the driving ethos behind it? Why is what you do important?
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A
OneSulting is a company that is a passion project that my co founder, Jonathan and I have founded. It stemmed from us being in corporate and realizing that we didn't know a single thing about, like, resumes and interviewing and networking and job applications and all these, like, buzzwords that people kept throwing at us. And we were just like, I don't know what any of that stuff means. But as soon as we got into corporate, the more we realized that the closer we got to the recruiting process, the more we felt like, wait, this isn't Rocket science. Why does everyone make it seem like it's crazy? And so that's what wantsulting is. Our mission is to turn underdogs into winners. For those people who come from non traditional backgrounds, we help you get your dream jobs. That's what we do. That's the ethos behind our company and why we do what we do.
- [04:55]
B
Why is it called Wansulting?
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A
Okay, so the reason why, to be.
- [04:59]
B
Clear, Jerry's last name is Lee.
- [05:00]
A
It's Lee. Yeah. It's not Jerry. And we also have a friend, Jerry Juan, who everyone seems to confuse me with him. My name is Jerry Lee. Wonsulting is called Wansulting because we are combining winning and consulting.
- [05:13]
B
Like you won something.
- [05:14]
A
Exactly. But if you do winsulting, if you look at it, it's w. Insulting. That's horrible branding. Horrible. So we're like, okay, so we have to do one salting.
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B
Okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so before your time at onesulting, you actually worked at Google?
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A
I did.
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B
Talk to me a little bit about your time at a huge tech company like that. Do you have any memories that really encapsulate what it was like to work there?
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A
I think working at Google was the best and worst thing that's ever happened to me because it was best, because it gave me the idea of, wow, now that I've made it, what does happiness mean? And what does. What is my life purpose? And so much of my life, I was like, if I make it to my dream job, only then will I be happy. Once I make this amount of money, only then I'm allowed to be happy. Especially coming from an Asian American background, I'm like, this is what my parents have dreamt up for me. So therefore, I thought that was what I was supposed to do. And so in a lot of ways, I think it brought a lot of joy. But I think in a lot of ways, it also made me realize, well, hey, working all my time and hours of trying to figure out how to make ads, make more money for Google was not my dream job. That was not anything exciting for me.
- [06:26]
B
You're making the Internet work worse. Yeah.
- [06:28]
A
I'm like, I don't care about any of that. And so I think for me, it was. It was great in a sense that it gave me a really great starting point in my career. It was bad, in a sense that it made me realize that, hey, maybe my job isn't everything and maybe this isn't what I want to do for the rest of my Life, which gave opportunity for what I actually wanted to do.
- [06:48]
B
Yeah. And you know, you said you wanted to leave to do what you actually wanted to do, but when did you have that like light bulb moment of like, I'm going to leave? Because I feel like when people hear job at Google, that's like, that's the promise, that's the dream.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And people are foaming at the mouth to work there. What gave you the courage to start your own thing?
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A
Well, I think what gave me the courage was that there was. Since we're talking about money, let's talk about money.
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B
Let's do it.
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A
So at the time, I was 24 years old and I was making $200,000 a year.
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B
It's a lot of money.
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A
I was like, wow, I'm making it. I max out my 4.1k. And so that was at the point though where I was like, if I had made an additional 10, 20, $30,000, would that change anything about my life? No. I was like, no. If anything, my bank account will grow higher, but that's it. Like, I wouldn't do anything different. And so there was a, that was a point for me where I was like, well, more money does not mean happiness, but my stress levels have gone up exponentially from just working a lot. And that was at the point where I was like, well, what does life look like beyond just jobs and money? And that's where I started looking inside and going, okay, well, what I really enjoyed doing with my extra time was talking to different students, organizations, colleges about workshops on resumes and job search. And that gave me a lot of fulfillment. And only up until that point, I was doing it as a side gig. And, and so I was like, I'm going to leave this. Because I felt like the stress to reward ratio was very, very low for me. And then only at that point I was like, well, I'm going to just give it six months to see where this takes me. And six, seven years later, here we are.
- [08:29]
B
Wow. So you leave Google, you start onesulting. Now it's time for me to source you for information.
- [08:37]
A
Okay, let's do it.
- [08:39]
B
There's a lot of talk about the job market right now and how it is, for lack of a better term, shit, yeah, there's fear among job seekers. It feels like there's rising long term unemployment, mass layoffs. Spooky vibes.
- [08:53]
A
Yes.
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B
Looking at the landscape right now, what advice would you give someone who wants to look for a job and is just feeling a lot of dread about what's out there.
- [09:03]
A
First, I want to say that's very real. The number of job applications that recruiters are getting are almost triple than what they were getting three, four years ago. And so a lot of this idea of, like, oh, my gosh, a job market's cooked. I'm fucked.
- [09:16]
B
You can say that.
- [09:17]
A
Oh, like, I'm fucked. Like, that's so real. And so there's a lot of data to suggest that, and that's very real. But then that doesn't mean that you're screwed. You still can take action into your career. And this is what I would do. The first and most important thing that I think a lot of people miss, especially when you've been job searching for so long, is people will think, oh, my God, Jerry, I just want any job. Just, I'm willing to do sales, marketing, operations. Just give me anything. And that's actually the exact opposite of what you want to be doing. If anything, you want to be drilling down deeper into saying, instead of me wanting to do marketing, the market is now asking you to go, well, I want to be really deep into influencer marketing. I really want to be deep into paid ads marketing. And having that specificity is going to help you win over 80% of the applicants. The second thing I would do is really make sure that your resume is up to par. Viv, I've been doing this for almost seven years. I talk to a lot of people about resumes, and the number of resumes I see that are just such dog shit, are so real. And it's coming from people who, like, follow me, talk to me, and like, jerry, what do you think about my resume? I look at. I'm like, did you watch any of my videos? That's crazy. And so I think there's a lot of. There's a sense that because there's so much information out there, the bar has been raised. I don't think that's the case at all. If you can do step one and step two really well, that's gonna put you ahead of 90% of people. And then at that point, you have to give yourself grace, because the time it takes to get a job has increased given the amount of effort that it takes. And so giving yourself a little bit more grace to say, hey, it's gonna take a little bit more effort. It's gonna take a little bit more time. I think that's important. If you do those three things, I think that will set you up. That is a recipe for success.
- [11:02]
B
And you mentioned it. What are the features of a dog Shit resume versus a really good one.
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A
So a great resume is something that I should look at. I can look at really quickly go, this person definitely in marketing, this person in sales, this person in engineering, for sure. There's no doubt about that.
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B
Yeah.
- [11:19]
A
The dog shit resumes are the ones that I look at. One that are two pages, three pages. No one's spending three pages looking at your resume. I've done small experiments where I put eye trackers on recruiters. Ooh. I got them to look through resumes and they didn't know there was an eye tracker. And I would just be like, oh, just let me know when you want me to look through the next page. They would never look at the second page. They would just go, ah, reject, ah, interview. And so I was like, that to me, was crazy because I'm like, no one is looking at second page on a resume. I even did this to Reid Hoffman, the co founder of LinkedIn, and he still was like, yep, nah, second, second page resume doesn't matter. And so nobody wants an essay. I should be able to look at your resume to go. This person knows exactly what they're doing. And the second most important thing I think goes back to what I said before. Specificity. I should know exactly what you're doing in marketing, what you're doing in sales. It can't just be marketing. It has to be influencer marketing. It has to be paid marketing, it has to be brand marketing. That's so, so, so important. If you could do those two things, you've already just stood out like. But still, people are looking to listen to this and not do it. It's crazy.
- [12:26]
B
And there was an actual tip that you taught me, and this was like years ago. There is a specific letter or shape that your resume should look like.
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A
Yes.
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B
Can you explain that to us?
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A
So the recruiters read in an F shape on your resume. What they'll do is they'll scan the first part of your resume. Most likely that'll. What they're looking for is they're looking for your most recent company and your organization. They'll read your job title, your company. They'll maybe read a couple bullet points. They might read your second or third job. And. And that's it. That's all you get. And so if you know that you have to solve for those six seconds, will those six seconds better be the most impactful six seconds where someone looks at that and goes, oh, so easy. You, your experience is abc, boom, interview. And if it's not, if you're not Passing the six second test. Well, you're not getting the interview.
- [13:16]
B
What is your take on. Don't, don't make fun of me having like weird interests on your, your resume. Okay, so hear me out.
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A
Okay. What. What interests.
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B
So, on my resume, I actually put like weird interests. So, like, interested in watching gangster mob movies.
- [13:35]
A
No. No, you don't.
- [13:37]
B
Yes, I do.
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A
No, you don't.
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B
I did. And when I tell you when I was interviewing at J.P. morgan.
- [13:43]
A
Yeah.
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B
The number of interviewers that were like, so what's your favorite mob movie?
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A
You would write? Gangster mom movies.
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B
Yeah.
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A
That's crazy.
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B
Is that really?
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A
No, that's bold. That's bold. I like.
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B
Okay. But they would ask me what your favorite. Like what my favorite mom movie is. Yeah. And that way we would burn 15 minutes of a 30 minute interview talking about Goodfellas so they couldn't ask me any technical questions.
- [14:03]
A
Yeah. That's.
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B
They would run out of time and they'd be like, ah, I guess you were cool.
- [14:06]
A
Yeah. That's so smart. So interviewing is a different beast. A lot of people think it's about, oh, like I need to sell them on what I can do about the job. And that's part of that for sure. But the bigger part is, can I imagine myself working with you?
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B
Yeah.
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A
And that I, I think most people don't really spend enough time focusing on. So what you did was very strategic. You put something highly, highly niche and highly specific to maybe to what like a lot of finance bros may like to hear, then watch. That was smart. I like that. Genius.
- [14:37]
B
Ding, ding, ding.
- [14:38]
A
Big brain genius. I love that. But I think that a broader point of interviews, people look for three things. Can you do the job? Which probably makes up 30, 40% of someone's decision making.
- [14:50]
B
That seems light, like very low actually.
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A
Yeah. Because at the crux of it, most people can do the job.
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B
Right.
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A
Right. If you're interviewing for a marketing manager, there's a hundred people who have done it before.
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B
Right.
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A
The bigger part is, the second thing is can I imagine myself working with you? And there's a big cultural element that I think a lot of people miss and. Exactly that. If I, if we're. As one of the things that we talked about in consulting, recruiting all the time is the airport test. If we got stuck at the airport together and we're chilling in the lounge and we're like, all right, we got three more hours before our flight leaves, Am I gonna, am I gonna just wanna just get up and just take an earlier flight? Because I don't like talking to you or am I gonna be like, wow, I actually really enjoy your presence and you're just, you're really cool to hang out with.
- [15:31]
B
Yeah.
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A
Super important. And the last thing is, can I imagine you staying? One of the worst staying. But yes. One of the biggest things hiring managers hate doing is they hate spending time focusing on recruiting. On average, at Google, we used to say it takes about six months to get someone fully onboarded. So if you're only there for a year, you're only getting six months of value before you have to start the whole process all over again. So retention is really important. And so adding those latter two things as part of core focus, as part of your preparation, super important.
- [16:01]
B
Cool. Okay, so like, we've now talked about how you should be making yourself really, really niche.
- [16:07]
A
Yes.
- [16:07]
B
What a relatively decent resume looks like. Let's go down this process like we're doing this together.
- [16:13]
A
Let's do it.
- [16:14]
B
Say you send out your resume to all of these different places and a couple of places are like, yeah, actually we will be giving you a first interview.
- [16:21]
A
Nice.
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B
How do I prep for that? How do I make the best first impression? How do I knock this out of the park?
- [16:27]
A
So there's three areas I really highly, highly recommend that people focus on the company. There's some basic level, high level stuff that you should understand about the company. How they make money, what is their product or main product or service, how does it work? And more importantly, what is your opinion about a product or service? Is it good? Is it bad? Do they have something that they can improve? Those are four core things I think you need to study at the highest level. The second thing that you need to understand is the actual team. What does a team actually do if they're general marketing? Well, what do they market? Have you seen anything that they've done before that you admire or don't admire? Really important. I think the third thing that most people miss is you need to know the interviewer. You need to stalk the shit out of the interviewer. Super controversial. I don't give a shit. It works. For example, I remember I had an interview once where I interviewed the per. Or I was looking up the person and I found their Instagram and I saw that they were really, really into Star wars. And so I was like, okay, well, I've never watched Star Wars. I don't even like Star wars, but that doesn't mean I can't act. So then during the interview we were like, oh, how are, you know, first five minutes? Oh, how are you good? How are you? I was like, oh, you know, I was watching like, the latest, like, Star wars movie that came out that. Oh, really? What do you think of it? I'm like, oh, yeah. And then I had wrote a little note about, like, what I thought about it, and they're like, oh, my gosh, I love Star wars, but no way. You love Star Wars. That's crazy. So what you're talking about for the gangster mob movies, you can manufacture that?
- [17:50]
B
Yeah.
- [17:51]
A
And again, if you know that 50% of a hiring manager's decision is whether or not they can work with you, well, play that to your advantage. Stalk the shit out of them. Find them. Find a common interest, and if you don't have one, make that your interest for the next two days. And that's a way that you can really elevate yourself beyond just. Yeah, yes. I'm so good at Excel, let me tell you, all my, like, hotkeys that I can do and all these things like, no one cares. No one cares about, like, yeah, they care, but, like, they don't care, you know?
- [18:17]
B
Okay, so we've nailed the first interview, which is usually, I feel like kind of just like a vibe check.
- [18:23]
A
Yeah.
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B
Nothing crazy. But then we kind of get into second and third rounds at this point.
- [18:29]
A
Yes.
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B
How do we prepare for those? Some of these interviews might be technical. Some of these interviews might be with more senior management.
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A
Like, yes.
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B
What are the things we can do?
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A
So most likely during these interviews, you're going to be talking to three levels of people. It's going to be your peers, your manager and their peers, and executives. And so generally, the way I like to think about it is the people who are your peers, they're the ones who are going to give you the most technical interviews. The more in the weeds of. So imagine you were on this team. How would you do X task or how would you solve Y project? And those are the times where you really got to flex those skills. Managers are going to think a little bit more about your longevity, a little bit more soft, and they might go a little bit technical, but they're trying to understand you as a person and then as a professional because they have their team to assess your actual skills. Executives, the number one thing they care about is how you think, how, what motivates you. I remember one of the questions I got when I was interviewing for a director level role was, how do you build trust? And we spent 30 minutes talking about how I would build trust. And it's a lot. It's a lot More theoretical. But it's important to them because they're like, well, if I'm going to put you in front of my leadership team, I want to make sure that I'm not going to embarrass myself. And so I would say those three people, those three categories of people ask those types of questions.
- [19:46]
B
Well, Jerry Lee, how would you build trust? Oh, what was your answer to that?
- [19:50]
A
So at the time, what I said is the way that I would build trust. I would use data. I would use data to make sure all my opinions are data driven, yada, yada, yada. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm killing this shit. But it was a very average answer. But what I would do now is I would say I listen more than I speak. And so I think especially in those more leadership level conversations, you'll often hear a lot of people just, they have loud voices and they say a lot. Very rarely do you think, do you see people who are very calm, put together, and they'll just say three sentences, five sentences in the room, and everyone will listen. And I think those people maximize the value per word that they say. And I think being that person, I think builds an immense amount of trust more than being data driven and seeing all the analysis and all this stuff.
- [20:40]
B
Okay, so now we have two routes to go down.
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A
Sure.
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B
Let's do the easy one. You don't get it.
- [20:49]
A
Okay.
- [20:50]
B
Yeah, well, actually, let's back up. After each of these interviews. Is there something that we should be doing? Are thank you notes still cool or are they lame?
- [20:59]
A
Yeah, you should be going up, you should be finding their office address and delivering a cake to say thank you.
- [21:06]
B
I can't stand you.
- [21:10]
A
Thank you notes. Absolutely. That's, that's baseline. That's a bare minimum of what you can do to just be average table stakes. One of the additional things that you could do that, and I would recommend you do these for roles that you're genuinely excited about. I put together a 3, 4 slide presentation. First slide, quick summary of who you are through 2, 3, 4 bullet points of your experiences that are most relevant to the role. And slide number two would be here. Here's exactly what I would do if I were to join this company. 30, 60, 90.
- [21:44]
B
30, 60, 90 being 30, 60 and 90 days.
- [21:47]
A
First 30 days, I want to do this. 60 days, I want to do this. 90 days, I want to do this. And then the third slide is going to be a little bit more details of projects that you think that the team would take on that would prove to Be impactful. You could be completely off. You could be completely wrong. But the most important thing that I think a lot of people try to look for is, is this person willing to go above and beyond how proactive is this person. And if you can go and show that during the interview process, that's going to show so much more than you saying that you can do. You can do really good job at making presentations. We'll actually show them.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so I recognize that this requires a lot of work and time, but I think if you really want to stand out ahead of the process, this is what I recommend out of me. And we at One Salty now have about 40 people on average. We'd interview anywhere from about 10 to 15 people per position. Can you guess the number of people who would. Who have done something like this?
- [22:42]
B
I would say it's. You could count it on one hand.
- [22:47]
A
Yeah, probably about three. And all three of those have gotten hired.
- [22:51]
B
Wow.
- [22:51]
A
A lot of those have shown characteristics of what we would look for in the role. And more importantly, they showed us that they actually understood the role instead of just being like, yeah, I would do operations. Oh, no, you would do operations for the. Want something AI where you would help solve ABC problem. Oh, my God, that's amazing. Immediately, green flag. For most of the history of television, if you missed a show, you just missed it. It was over, it was gone. But then this little company called TiVo came along and gave people superpowers. You could pause live television, you could rewind it, you could save it and watch it later. It was incredible. And the people, people who had it could not stop talking about it. This week on Version History, a new chat show about old technology, we talk about the history of TiVo and how it is that a company whose products actually no one ever really had or used became one of the most iconic stories in tech. All that on Version history. Wherever you get podcasts.
- [23:49]
B
Yeah. Okay, I love that. Now we gotta go to the fork in the road.
- [23:53]
A
Yes.
- [23:54]
B
If you get rejected.
- [23:56]
A
Yeah.
- [23:57]
B
These days it sometimes feels like they don't even tell you.
- [23:59]
A
Yeah, they'll ghost you and they won't even look at you.
- [24:02]
B
How do we handle that?
- [24:03]
A
So five step follow up rule. Follow up five times. Give it three days each. Between each follow up, and if they don't answer, just assume that it's rejected and move on. What you don't want to do is be hung up like a. Like a hung up ex. You're like, oh, my God. I'm really hoping that they're going to call me. No, they're not going to give a shit about you. If anything, they're. You're a number on their spreadsheet that goes, nope, done, you're out. And so recommend that you follow up five times, three times, and give it three days between each follow up. And if they don't follow up, that's gone. But I do think that a lot of people take these rejections as points of failure, but I actually think those are points of data. So, for example, if, let's say you apply to a hundred jobs and you get 10 interviews, that means. And let's say all those interviews bombed, right. That means, let's just. In the worst case scenario, okay, that means. Well, the bad news is you still need to apply more jobs. The good news is, is that those are 10 data points that tell you that there's an alignment from your resume and the type of job that you're applying to, that part is going really well. Therefore, do not change a single thing on your resume. Do not change a single thing about what you're doing to get those interviews. Whatever you're doing, it's working now. You know that. Okay. Something in the first round interview is going wrong.
- [25:19]
B
Yeah.
- [25:19]
A
And most. And you have to assess and be honest with yourself. Which of the three is it? Is it that I'm not telling them I can do the job well? Is it that I'm not telling them I like Star wars enough, or is that because. Or am I telling, am I giving signal that I'm going to be a flight risk and if I join the company, I'm going to leave after a year? Right. Trying to figure out what, that, what that is is really important.
- [25:38]
B
It's like, are you smart enough, are you likable enough and are you going to stay?
- [25:42]
A
That's exactly right. Yeah. And then if you get further along in the interviews and let's say you're at the final round, if you get to the final round and you don't get the job at that point, it's not a reflection of you. Right. It's most likely a reflection of someone else's judgment of you. To say this person was just 3% better, therefore I'm going to give this person a job that's 3% better. That doesn't mean that you weren't good. That just means that their perception of this person was 3% better. And so if someone is getting a ton of final rounds and they're at that step and they're not getting the job, I would tell them that's the best possible scenario in a job search process, apart from getting the job, because that means you have done, you're doing everything else right. And it's just a matter of time. And so the job search is an equation of time you spent versus the effort that you put in. If you can just focus on those two things, you will get a job, guaranteed.
- [26:34]
B
I love that. Okay. You will get a job, guaranteed. You will say you do get one.
- [26:41]
A
Yes.
- [26:41]
B
Okay. So typically what I've found is that you just get this random call from a number that you do not have saved and it's somebody in hr.
- [26:49]
A
Yeah.
- [26:49]
B
And they're like, hey, Jerry, I'm calling from XYZ Corporation. I'm calling with some good news. We'd love to extend you an offer to do XYZ here. And sometimes they'll preview the number and the, you know, pay on the phone, sometimes they don't. They're like, we'll send that offer to you in your inbox.
- [27:11]
A
Yes.
- [27:12]
B
How do we handle that?
- [27:14]
A
The first thing is, I think that happens sometimes. The other times that'll happen is they'll email you to be like, oh, he. Like, yeah, would you want to set up a quick 5 minute chat? And that's the worst because you never know if they're going to just reject you on the spot. They'll be like, you were great and a team loved you and we're so excited.
- [27:29]
B
They do. They take the time to reject.
- [27:30]
A
They do. That's the most fucked up thing ever. Cause you're like, oh my God, I can't wait. And the emails are so vague. It's like, do you have five minutes to chat later this afternoon? You're like, is that a good thing or bad thing? So in the. Yeah. Today you just don't know until you know. But assume that you know. The first step is to be excited. Show excitement. It does not matter what the offer letter states. Be excited. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I have all this energy. Do you mind, Doc, do you mind sending that over email so I have it on paper? I'd love to review it and, and get back to you as soon as I can. The offer is not real until you have something written down.
- [28:08]
B
Yeah.
- [28:08]
A
Facts like that is baseline level of what you should do. The second thing that you should do is you should always take that pay and compare it to what the market says. Now the way that you do this is you look at the years of experience of job title of the job that you're going For. So let's say it's five to eight years. Then you look at the function marketing, you look at the location and go, okay, it's in New York. And you look at the size of the company. Is it a Google or is it a startup? All four of those variables will impact the size and expectation of what the market will value, your skill set, and what you should be comparing it to. Let's say you have those numbers and I highly recommend using ChatGPT to just do all the research for you. Then you want to hop on the call. I am not a big fan of email because it's so easy for them to just scheme behind the scenes or a lot of easy. It's easy for things to get misconstrued over email. Hop on a call with them and first thing you want to do is you want to sound and say, hey, I'm so excited. I'm so thankful and excited that you gave me an offer. I'm so excited to be here. And the biggest leverage point that you have is you are the team has spent probably over 10 to 30 hours at that point to get you an offer and they want to sell you. So your value and your power negotiation is so high at that point and you need to leverage a shit because.
- [29:22]
B
If they already want you, like, they have already taken the time to interview you, they've probably taken the time to interview other people.
- [29:29]
A
Feedback, discussions, emails. So much has gone into it that at that point they are at your mercy. Right. And I think a lot of people forget that and recruiters don't want you to remember that. So for everyone listening, it is so important that you remember you have value and the most value in at that point in the negotiation. So you go into the call, sound super excited and you have to remember that the recruiter does not care about the compensation. Like if they give you more compensation or not, it does not affect their pay. Right, Right.
- [30:03]
B
There's money isn't coming out of their bank account.
- [30:04]
A
Exactly. There's like, how quickly can I just sign you, get you in so I can just focus on the six other roles that I have to hire for. And I would know this because my girlfriend's a recruiter.
- [30:14]
B
Oh, amazing.
- [30:15]
A
Yeah. And so what happens is you want to, you want to hop on the call, hey, I'm so excited. But there's one last thing that I'd love to talk about before I can sign and sign and close this offer. And you want to say the buzzword that people love is the fair market rate, the Fair market rate for this role is X compensation is why? What can we do to make up. Make up that number. And you go silent. You don't say a single thing. And there. And it might be awkward too. Click mute. Whatever you scream, whatever you need to do, whatever you need to do, but do not say a single thing because you have given out the question. And on their, on their end they're going to give you one of three responses. They're going to say, you know, they're going to give you. One of the possible answers they'll give you is like, they'll give you the buzzwords, you know, Viv, like, you know, I really appreciate that but you know, part of the why, you know, our comp. Our compensation package is unique because we're going to have faster promotion cycles and you know, we also have all these benefits and yada, yada, yada. And your answer to that's always going to be. And that's exactly why I interviewed here. I'm so excited about that and that's why I'm even considering this. And so I'm so thankful for that. If we can get this last thing done, you have me. You go on mute. And the two other possible scenarios is they'll say, let me take it back to the team, at which point you have a much higher likelihood that they'll say yes. Or they'll just say yes on the spot. But in the worst case scenario, they say no. Then at that point you want to start negotiating other things like, hey, then can I work from home or can I have a six month check in point to get a performance review? What I don't recommend people is to negotiate everything up front. Hey, yeah, so I noticed that there's a lot of things wrong with this contract. I want salary, I want a performance bonus, I want a relocation bonus, I want this, this, this, this. It becomes really overwhelming for the recruiter because then they have to take that to the leadership team. The leadership team is going to look at that and go, they're asking for seven things like, oh my God, like it's just so much of a bigger headache. And so the second stage negotiation, if the compensation fails is then you want to start negotiating other things. And so that's the way I would structure negotiations.
- [32:27]
B
Equity, you know, extra flexible working arrangement to pick up your kid.
- [32:32]
A
Exactly, yes.
- [32:35]
B
Wow. I feel so ready to go get a new job.
- [32:38]
A
All right, babe, let's role play now. Ding, ding, ding.
- [32:42]
B
You're ridiculous. But I also want to talk a little bit now that we have walked through a good process. What are some of the most common misconceptions that you have heard around work and career and interviewing?
- [32:59]
A
I think one of the biggest misconceptions I've heard is that working 10 years of working is the same as doing 10 years of first year experiences. So let me bring.
- [33:13]
B
What does that mean?
- [33:14]
A
Let me write that down. So someone could be doing the same type of work for 10 years straight. The other type of person could be advancing in their careers for 10 years. Those two people from a compensation and money perspective are going to be making a seriously different amount of money. The concept in this job searching space is you always want to be earning where you're okay just doing the same thing over and over without any career advancement, knowing that you're just doing it because they're paying you really well. Or maybe you're okay taking a pay cut because you're saying I'm okay taking a pay cut because this skill is going to help develop me to get a much higher paying position in two to three years. Let me give you an example. So for example, let's say that someone is currently doing accounting and they're like, hey, accounting is not my thing, but I am very much okay, but I really want to get a much higher paying job. They might say, okay, even though they're five years into accounting, they're making good money. They might say, the path for financial freedom for me is that I need to be a software engineer and now I need, I need to make the big bucks. And what might, and what it might take to get there is they might have to go through further continued education and they might have to go to a junior level, which might decrease their compensation in the short term, but in the long term might significantly increase their compensation. And so I think there's. When people think about having seven years, 10 years of experiences, I think it's really important that you think about is it the 10 years of the same experience or is it 10 years of growed experience?
- [34:46]
B
That's actually really wise. You got to be learning, earning.
- [34:49]
A
Learning or earning. That's the principle.
- [34:52]
B
That's crazy. What is your best advice for someone who wants to earn six figures? Because I feel like there's this headline now that's like, well, you know, six figures isn't what it used to be.
- [35:02]
A
Like. Yeah.
- [35:03]
B
How do we get people not just like jobs.
- [35:07]
A
Yeah.
- [35:08]
B
Good jobs.
- [35:09]
A
Yes. I think when people want. If you're, if your main goal is compensation, unless you don't care about anything else. Right. I think the, the thing that you need to be looking at is you need to be looking at careers or where you are in your career and what it would take currently in your career to get to 100, $100,000. Let's say that you're in accounting and you realize that it's going to take me six years for me to get into accounting or it's going to take me six years for me to earn that six figure mark and that's the amount of investment I would have to make. That then becomes your baseline. If you're going to spend six years to earn $100,000 in accounting, well, where else could you put that time and effort? In other areas we gave the software engineering example, Perhaps you become going to trade work. Trade work is extremely lucrative that I think many people don't think about enough and potentially think about investing that time there. So I think if you're, if you're thinking about making six figures, it's important that you understand how much you, how long would it take for you to do that in your current career and if you were to invest that time into other spaces, what would that be? And so doing some research around what the top paying skills are. For example, 1,1 emerging market that is extremely popular, many people think about is there's a lot of AI adjacent skills. So for example, data labeling is a hot new.
- [36:27]
B
I don't even know what that means.
- [36:28]
A
Oh my gosh, Viv, data labeling is crazy. The short of it is these like ChatGPT, Gemini and all of them, they're hiring people with skills, accounting, music, it doesn't matter what, what they are. And they will pay you anywhere from 50, 100, 150, $200 per hour to basically fill out homework assignments. Those homework assignments then get fed back into ChatGPT for it to get better. And there's, and those jobs are called data labelers. It's really interesting this has probably emerged in the past two years, but AI companies are just throwing money at it and it's extremely lucrative and crazy and very flexible.
- [37:11]
B
It's literally like an intelligence race.
- [37:13]
A
It very much is. And data is going to win. And so if you have a skill in nursing, in accounting, whatever, you can monetize that in addition to your core job as a data labeler. So understanding what the emerging fields are I think really important, especially in the world of AI.
- [37:30]
B
And speaking of an intelligence race, why don't we turn back the clock for some of our listeners who might be younger, maybe they're in school or you Know, kind of thinking about what they want their future to look like. You've heard the phrase follow your passion.
- [37:46]
A
Oh, God, yeah.
- [37:48]
B
What? Like there's obviously a lot of pat, like, you know, tension between following your passion and actually doing what pays the bills.
- [37:54]
A
That's right.
- [37:55]
B
How do you reconcile that? Like, how do you think about money, stability, passion all at once when choosing your career path?
- [38:03]
A
I think the core of the answer is find a 95. Find a 9 to 5 that'll pay for your 5 to 9 100%. I am currently what I believe to have the best job in the world. I get to focus on a problem that I'm deeply passionate about. I get to build a company, I get to speak to millions of people. And there are jobs. I absolutely hate what I do on a daily basis. But that's because at the, at the crux of it and there's also a lot of parts I love about it, but at the end of the day it's a job. And I think the more that you interweave and connect your passion and a job, I think for some careers you can make work, but I think the more it becomes a job and less so about a passion. And so I think it's really important that people bifurcate it, try to mix it and see if that works in a part time capacity. But I think as soon as money's involved and expectations and stuff, I think that the joy and fulfillment of passions really disappear. So for me, one thing I really like to do outside of my 9 to 5 is I will find classes to learn new skills. I actually did six months of singing. I've done three months of stand up.
- [39:08]
B
This is all new information to me. We've been friends for a very long time.
- [39:13]
A
This is, this is something I've done maybe over the past two years, but every six months I take on a new hobby completely unrelated to it.
- [39:20]
B
So singing stand up.
- [39:22]
A
I did improv, I did cooking, I did scuba diving. Now I want to get into color theory, so I want to understand color. So I want to sign up for a class.
- [39:30]
B
Are you Snoop Dogg? Like, what are these side quests?
- [39:33]
A
Well, these fulfill me in ways that my job can't. Right. Like, I really like the idea of starting from scratch, knowing nothing. And Viv. Oh my God, my singing class, they. The day before our class started, we get an email. Welcome to Singing 101. Be prepared to sing for five minutes in front of class. Thanks. Like, wait, you're telling me I have to sing for five minutes in front of People. And I was like, okay, everyone's probably bad, right? It's fine. I get there. There are people who literally sound like Pharrell Williams. I'm like, oh, my God, these people have such beautiful voices. And my voice cracks. And the first song I choose is Justin Bieber.
- [40:13]
B
No.
- [40:14]
A
I'm like, like, everyone knows Justin Bieber lyrics. Yeah, but the problem is, is I've never sung it without the. Without the voice. Without the voice.
- [40:23]
B
And so I was like, without the Justin Bieber part.
- [40:26]
A
And I only knew the chorus. And so when he started the bing, I was like, like, when do I start?
- [40:32]
B
Oh.
- [40:37]
A
You know you love me. I was like, oh, my God. But I love that feeling. And I think that feeling of like, oh, my God, I'm so nervous. Like, I don't know what to do to build up my confidence, figure out what it means to get good. Try my best to accentuate that skill. Once I'm at the point where I'm like, okay, I need to spend a lot more time to invest before I get really good, then I want to go into somewhere else. Because I really like that feeling of.
- [41:00]
B
Like, starting from nothing, something new.
- [41:02]
A
Yeah.
- [41:03]
B
You love doing new.
- [41:04]
A
I love that.
- [41:05]
B
That makes sense because you recently just went to Antarctica.
- [41:07]
A
I did.
- [41:08]
B
Which is, like, very new.
- [41:10]
A
I loved it. I loved it.
- [41:12]
B
Okay, all right, all right, all right. I want to talk about you personally.
- [41:17]
A
Yes.
- [41:17]
B
Okay. What is the best thing you've ever done for your personal finances? And, like, what is the number one money lesson that you wish you could tell everyone?
- [41:28]
A
I think the best personal finance decision I've made in my career was buying my parents a home.
- [41:34]
B
Tell me about that.
- [41:35]
A
This was probably back in 2021 where. Well, so first, for. For context, the reason why this was so important to me is because I come from a family of immigrants. And when my parents and family immigrated here, our number one goal was to have our home. Like, that was something that we dreamt of and talked about a lot.
- [41:52]
B
The dream.
- [41:53]
A
A dream. And that was our American dream. And growing up, we really. We come from humble beginnings. We really struggle financially, culturally, just trying to fit in and trying to see where our place is. And only up until I got my first full time job at Google. What I like, hey, I might be able to have enough financial leeway for me to try to make this thing happen for my parents. My brother And I in 2021 put our money together to go, parents, surprise. We have a home for you. And so that was a moment where I felt financially free, because that was A point where I never felt like my. I felt like money was not weighing me down anymore. It felt like. Like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'm like, I could just. I could retire now and just. And be free and I could live on the streets and be fine. I didn't want to do that. But you.
- [42:43]
B
Certainly not.
- [42:44]
A
Yeah, but you get what I'm saying. So for me, I think that was the best decision. I've invested my money when I was much earlier, which probably wasn't the smartest financial decision, but to me, it was the best emotional decision that I could have ever done because that had given me enough of a mental headspace for me to take a risk and go all in on my business. If I had not been at that point, there's no way I would have been comfortable enough to, you know, say no to a $200,000 a year job.
- [43:10]
B
Right?
- [43:11]
A
There's no way.
- [43:12]
B
Okay, I got some quick rapid fire questions for you. Talk to me a little bit about what you think is the most common interview question and how we should answer it.
- [43:23]
A
The most common interview question that most people don't think is an interview question is, how are you? What do 99% of people say?
- [43:30]
B
Good, good.
- [43:31]
A
How are you? Good. Okay, let's get started. That is the best opportunity for you to show a little bit about your character. Ask me, how are you?
- [43:37]
B
How are you, Jerry?
- [43:38]
A
Viv, I'm so good. I just came back from Antarctica and I'm so tired and I'm a little sunburnt, but honestly, I'm feeling pretty good. How are you, Viv?
- [43:46]
B
Oh, that's good.
- [43:47]
A
Yeah, right? That was really good. Because then you're like, whoa, wait, you went to Antarctica? Wait, tell me about that. You force a conversation for the recruiter to step outside of their interview shoes into their human shoes. And the more that you can do that, you hit the second quality that people look for. Do I like you? The more that you can interject those things into parts of the interview, the better. So how are you? Is the first interview question that most people don't think about that they should spend more time thinking about.
- [44:13]
B
Oh, that's a good one. Okay. Now, on the flip side, what is the weirdest question you've ever heard either been asked yourself or have heard someone has been asked in an interview?
- [44:23]
A
The weirdest question I've ever been asked is, what is the most unpopular opinion you have? Whoa. I'm like, what are you trying to measure? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I'm like, I literally sat there thinking for three minutes and the only thing that could come to mind was about pizza. I was like, like, I guess pineapple doesn't belong on pizza. He was like, why? I was like, I just don't think it tastes good. He said, okay. And I got rejected.
- [44:48]
B
Oh my God.
- [44:50]
A
Was I supposed to have some like built out answer crazy? I was like, I don't know how to answer that. And I still don't know. But I don't know why you would ever ask someone that question. That's so weird.
- [45:01]
B
My gosh. I'm gonna have to like go home and think about. I don't even have an answer for that right now.
- [45:05]
A
How would you answer that?
- [45:06]
B
Most unpopular question or most unpopular opinion? Opinion. Oh, well, see, here's the thing. I have a lot of unpopular opinions, but I wouldn't want to offend that person.
- [45:16]
A
Okay.
- [45:17]
B
You know what I mean?
- [45:18]
A
It's like, because you don't know anything about that person and you don't want to give, I guess, an answer that could potentially offend them. Offend them? Yeah.
- [45:25]
B
And you can offend people in a lot of different ways.
- [45:29]
A
But that was probably the craziest interview question I've ever gotten. I was just like, what?
- [45:35]
B
Okay, what is the best money advice you've ever received?
- [45:40]
A
The best money advice I've ever received was time in market beats timing the market.
- [45:45]
B
Oh, did you get that from me?
- [45:47]
A
Oh, I don't know, I might watch a couple of videos.
- [45:49]
B
You're so funny. Yeah, you're such a kiss ass. But honestly, it's working. What about your worst financial decision? Like tell me about like your down bad moment. Like, like brokest ever been.
- [46:01]
A
Okay. I think the I'm a huge simp. Okay.
- [46:06]
B
Oh my gosh. Go ahead.
- [46:07]
A
So when I was in college, I was dating this girl who I thought was I was gonna marry. I'm like, oh my God. Married and all this stuff. And at the time I would work part time internships so I could earn money for myself and you know, try to live my life. And almost every doll that I earned, I was like, oh my gosh, if I could just like treat this girl and like fly her out and like, oh. And I was scraping, I was, I was like, I had nothing. I had like $300 in my bank account and I would just, you know, earn like $300 for my internship. And I go, okay, awesome. I have $300 now. I could fly my girlfriend. And like at the time I didn't know Anything about, like. Like. Like putting money away for taxes and all that stuff. And so, like, when I owed, like, 2500 at the end of the year.
- [46:49]
B
I was like, you don't have that money.
- [46:52]
A
I was like, oh, my God, I don't have that money. And so that was probably the dumbest decision I've made because I didn't budget any of my money. I never thought about it. I was just like, oh, anyone who's in love would spend anything for their partner. And that's what I did. Stupid decision.
- [47:06]
B
And you didn't even end up with her.
- [47:07]
A
No, I didn't. Oh, my gosh. She was the experience. Quite the experience.
- [47:13]
B
And it's so funny, too, because your girlfriend now is, like, wonderful.
- [47:16]
A
She's amazing. Yeah.
- [47:17]
B
And so, like, this is just really funny. What is one thing that you splurge on without guilt?
- [47:23]
A
Experiences like Antarctica this past year, when I. When I turned 30 last year, oh, my God, I went to seven continents. And the reason all seven in that. In that year, in 2025. And the reason why was because I remember I had a professor in college. He was, like, in his six late 60s, early 70s, the most accomplished professor on campus by far. He was, like, part of the Navy, worked at this consulting firm 20 years. Like, it was crazy. I remember once I walked up to him after class, and he was looking at his phone, right? And I was like, professor, I have a question. And he was. He ignored me. He was looking at his phone, and I was like, he opened up his Roth. He had his Roth IRA Open. It had $11 million in it. I was like, oh, my God. And he was like, what. What question do you have? But during that class, he disappeared for two weeks out of the blue. Was like, sorry, guys, I went to Antarctica for the first time. Before he asked, yes, it was amazing. Let's continue class. Like, he was. No bs, like, just on it. But I thought to myself, and I was like, damn. Like, you're someone who has all this money, all this achievement, and for the. You went to Antarctica for the first time and you loved it, and you talked about how amazing it was, but, like, you didn't do that before in life. And I feel like, to me, that the bigger lesson there was, I don't want to let work or anything, professional commitments prevent me from having to do my life experiences. I, for example, we rescheduled this podcast because I was going to Antarctica. So for me, experience is something I will never bat an eye to spend on.
- [48:56]
B
Amazing. Okay, so now that we are wrapping up our conversation. OneSulting has an incredible AI tool. Can you like tell me a little bit about this and how I can use it?
- [49:06]
A
Yes. Once Alting AI is the only platform where we covered the end to end of the job search. We help you figure out what job titles you should go for. Is your resume good enough? What jobs you should be actually applying to? Will we have a tracker to help track all your applications? Are you applying to the right amount of jobs? How many interviews are you getting? Oh, that interview rate is bad. Let's go back to your resume. So we use data to help you identify where you're stuck in the job search, help you provide all the right tools to get you better, and actually help you get a job. That is what onesulting AI is.
- [49:40]
B
It's literally what exactly we just walked through, except step by step. And you like actually help people with their personalized situation.
- [49:48]
A
That's exactly what it is. We've been building it now for the past three and a half years. Three years. And we have a team, about 40 people to help us do it.
- [49:55]
B
I'm so impressed. Thank you so much for being here. You have been a treasure trove of wisdom. I feel like my audience has to have learned a lot. Tell us where we can find you and find OneSulting.
- [50:06]
A
You can find us@oneSulting.com you can also find me at JerryJhlee on all social media platforms. It's not Jerry J. Lee that a lot of people think JH is my Korean name. So Jerry JH Lee.
- [50:18]
B
Amazing. Thank you so much.
- [50:20]
A
Thank you so much for having me. It's such a blast.
- [50:22]
B
Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, part of the Vox Media Podcast network. If you like the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review and subscribe to the so you never miss an episode. Got a burning financial question that you want covered in a future episode? Write to us via podcast at yourrichbff. Com, Follow Net Worth and chillpod on Instagram to stay up to date on all podcast related news. And you can follow me at YourRichBFF for even more financial know how. See you next week.
- [50:49]
A
Bye.