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We've had a lot of questions come in this year from people in ServiceNow bootcamps. In this episode we try to cover the most frequent and important.
Authentic, Authoritative, Unapologetic ServiceNow commentary by Cory "CJ" Wesley and Robert "The Duke" Fedoruk
[00:00:00] Duke: . All right. Corey, what are we talking about?
[00:00:02] CJ: man, duke. Today we're gonna talk about frequently asked questions from those who are participating in boot camps.
[00:00:08] Duke: Oh yes. there are a couple major boot camps out there, and there are going to be many, many, many, many more in the next few years, right? Or the next, the next few months. Days.
we've
[00:00:23] CJ: and notably there's one less.
[00:00:26] Duke: notably, yes. We won't go into the details of that. I don't. I don't.
[00:00:30] CJ: No, no, We can skip the details, but yeah.
[00:00:34] Duke: I mean everybody in there is capable.
They can, they can. You're grownups, right? They're very resourceful people. They can handle themselves. Right. We don't have to fight that battle before them, but we, what we do have to do is make sure they get to the finish line they want best. Right?
[00:00:47] CJ: But that right there, Don't have to fight the battle. Have to make sure that they got the resources they need to succeed.
[00:00:54] Duke: right. Cuz they're gonna, they're gonna get it done anyway. Right. It's just like, how fast can we get them?
[00:00:58] CJ: Yeah, exactly. Like how helpful can we be on that road?
[00:01:01] Duke: Right, right, right. then we also got Rise Up program, right? So they want to have, a million people done by 2024.
[00:01:09] CJ: That's a million with an M
[00:01:11] Duke: That's, yeah. Capital M.
And can I just go on a rant here?
[00:01:15] CJ: Go for
[00:01:16] Duke: With the drama around one of these boot camps and the number of people who are now trying to find a path to a finish line, right? What do you think? Suppose there's like 200, 300 of them.
[00:01:27] CJ: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I've, I've seen estimates up to like 700.
[00:01:32] Duke: Let's give it 700. if we can't help people get clarity on a finish line, a system getting across it. If we can't do that in days, in days, by two weeks from now, how on earth is the ecosystem gonna add? 999,300 more.
[00:01:53] CJ: Fair enough. Right?
[00:01:56] Duke: You know, , it's just like, do you want fries with that
[00:02:03] CJ: Yeah, man. Like, this is exactly the thing. we've got a situation and now we gotta respond. And if we can't respond in days with the collective knowledge of the ecosystem, which is vast and deep and target it, if we can't turn that around in days and give folks a roadmap, some kind of, access to resources, the ability.
if we can't do that in days, then, how do you train a million people at scale? Right? Like I'm sure there are some minds at Service Now who are literally probably thinking about this, this problem right now.
[00:02:33] Duke: again, it's not a mean spirited comment to ServiceNow, right? But I think somebody would argue, well, as soon as ServiceNow gets in and starts its engine up, then you know, people will come in by the thousands and it's like, okay, well, I mean, if that's true and they have an engine to do that, let's just put those 700 people right in there like today.
[00:02:52] CJ: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:52] Duke: know,
[00:02:53] CJ: right.
[00:02:54] Duke: So to me it's showing that the, goal is awesome. Let's all push for the goal and help how we can, but The engine isn't there to make that happen.
[00:03:02] CJ: Yes, the engine, isn't there. And I think there's been a dependency on outside forces for that engine. And I think this might show that you can't rely too much on the outside forces to be the engine to deliver that. Does that make sense?
Because I think that's kind of where we are, right? Where, okay, we've got these people, we've got, you know, a lot, a lot of these, folks are spinning up, boot camps have spun up boot camps. they're getting folks in and they're training them and delivering them to the ecosystem. And that's a great partnership model when it works.
but right now what we see is an example of what happens when it doesn't work and how that can have disproportionate impacts and ripples throughout the entire ecosystem.
[00:03:45] Duke: Hmm. Have to think about that for a bit.
[00:03:48] CJ: Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:49] Duke: to me it is, it is such a huge number. I mean, it's ba, it's like the number is basically saying let's completely dwarf, dwarf the current size of the ecosystem. So everything that we've done in the past 15 years has to be done again and then multiplied in the next two.
[00:04:05] CJ: Yeah. Fair.
[00:04:06] Duke: it's just like mothership could not possibly do that by themselves. And the reason I know this is because in the 15 years, like basically, we built the community.
[00:04:17] CJ: Yeah.
[00:04:18] Duke: built the community, right? , Yeah, there was great, like the Wiki was awesome and the new community site was awesome, but the momentum was there before that from the rest of us.
[00:04:28] CJ: Absolutely. But what, the mothership did do is provide the tool set for that community, like you mentioned, the Wiki, right? And community, ServiceNow community itself, it created a lot of these, gathering places and information sources, That the community coalesced around.
right. And then, just basically took that to the next level. and so I think, with a program like Rise Up, I, I don't know how they're going to do it, But I think one of the things that has to be done is providing that tool set so that everyone's not recreating the will every time they want to.
They want to assist in this mission.
[00:05:01] Duke: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:02] CJ: I mean, now learning's great. And I think now learning's an integral part of this. But if I'm building a ServiceNow bootcamp, if I have to spin up the entire thing from scratch, And then if you build one and you spin up the entire thing from scratch and then seven other people build one and they spin up the entire thing from scratch, at some point I wonder, like if standardization isn't
[00:05:24] Duke: No, I
[00:05:24] CJ: of some of the processes, right?
Like,
[00:05:27] Duke: let's make it like, yeah. Somebody has a blueprint, right? And then the market. Is open to apply their additives, but there's some kind of sense that this is the minimum that you come out with.
[00:05:40] CJ: yes, exactly right. Like
[00:05:42] Duke: I can buy that.
[00:05:43] CJ: yeah, core plus, here's the core and then there's value add tacked around it, right? And this is what we are gonna bring to the table to make, you know, to differentiate ourselves. But everybody comes out knowing. X, Y, and Z or A, B, and C and ServiceNow has provided the tool set to deliver a B.
[00:05:58] Duke: In typical CJ in the Duke fashion, we are seven minutes in
on our first tangent before one
[00:06:06] CJ: completely off script, Oh, man. before we do transition, I do wanna say, I, I'm completely and totally behind the mission of Rise Up, right? Because I come from an area. where there's a lot of folks who could really, really benefit from being in the IT and the technology field.
and I benefited heavily from being in the technology field. And then I then benefited even more immensely when I transitioned to the ServiceNow field. Right? So that promise, of entering technology and it being life changing is absolutely. I wanna be very clear on that because I know that a lot of folks who were impacted by the events of this week, you know, were lured to the specific place with that promise of this thing being life changing.
I want them to know that it absolutely is and can be life changing. Right? Maybe though that one particular route turned out not to be the route to get you there, but don't give.
[00:07:04] Duke: it's been life changing for me. and I had a decent job beforehand, you know what I mean? , it wasn't like,
[00:07:09] CJ: Right
[00:07:09] Duke: yeah. Yeah. alright, so let's get into the, the ethics. So, people in various boot camps over the past week who have come to us with a load of questions.
We've done a couple Zoom sessions. We're gonna try and get some more in there. but there's basically, I feel there's a huge void, of essential information that people are not getting. there's a suite of questions that all have the same answer I'm finding,
[00:07:33] CJ: All
[00:07:33] Duke: And it's stuff like, how do I succeed on an interview? How do I prep for the exams? What other tips and tricks are there for me to get ahead? What else should I read? What videos are out there?
What courses are out there besides what's on now? And all of these questions have the same answer and it's stop thinking about information consumption and start thinking about tool usage,
[00:07:59] CJ: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:01] Duke: Boxers, box wrestlers, wrestle, plumbers, plum,
[00:08:06] CJ: Yeah,
[00:08:06] Duke: drivers drive. At some point you have to exercise the skill that you are training.
[00:08:12] CJ: Absolut, so fricking loo,
[00:08:14] Duke: You don't read no books for swimming, right? Like you just start off really bad at swimming really bad, and then it just gets easier and easier and easier. But you cannot avoid the application of the knowledge and no amount of reading is gonna get you there. There's gonna be a point where you could do nothing but read. 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next 1000 years, and it won't get you any further because you haven't touched the tool.
[00:08:41] CJ: Yeah, you gotta do it right. You gotta build it. you gotta jump in, you gotta roll up your sleeves , and you gotta get things done. Right? You gotta make those mistakes. I mean, that's why we got developer our servicenow.com, right? Go in and get your free instance. Muck around with it.
Blow it up, and reboot it and do it again. Eventually you're gonna get to the point where you're really confident with this tool and the things that you're reading while you're doing that will start to make so much more. when they're talking about attributes on a, on a ci, all of a sudden that makes more sense, right?
When you're actually looking at the CI in the tool and you see those attributes and you see how they reference other fields.
[00:09:18] Duke: Or imagine, this was 20 some years ago, but the whole idea of an M to M table,
[00:09:24] CJ: Yeah.
[00:09:24] Duke: I had an hour long lecture on it and all kinds of exercises in class and reading to do, but it never clicked until I was actually in a situation that needed an M to m.
[00:09:34] CJ: Yeah.
[00:09:35] Duke: And then it was just like, how do I even do it? All the theoretical stuff was gone, like it just didn't exist in my head anymore. And then I built it once and it was just like, oh, it was 20 minutes of applic.
[00:09:45] CJ: Absolutely. mark Cuban, frames this right, as like a run, a entrepreneur versus an entrepreneur, right? and one of the things he says is that, you know, in order to be an entrepreneur, you gotta lie to yourself a little bit, You gotta tell yourself, I can do this. You gonna be scared, but you gotta take that one small step of lying to yourself and saying, I can do this.
And then starting once you do, Everything else falls into play.
[00:10:09] Duke: like a lot of people would tell me, I know what I'm doing, I know how to use Flow Designer. Okay, tell me what you've built on flow designer. Uh, you know what I mean?
[00:10:18] CJ: right.
[00:10:18] Duke: And this is a non-starter in an interview. they won't accept a definitional answer.
[00:10:23] CJ: right.
[00:10:24] Duke: want to know how this, how the thing was applied. And, I've used this metaphor a hundred times, but it's basically if you wanted somebody to build you a house, And two people showed up at your door, one of them said, look at this portfolio of houses that I've built. And everybody loves them.
There's great places to have families. You know, they only increase in value and you know, they're super sturdy. This one survived a hurricane. And then you have somebody else who's like, oh man, we're gonna bring saws and hammers and nails and stuff. The people who describe their tools aren't the attractive ones to do the work you want, right?
If it's your money, you're gonna spend, quarter of a million dollars, building a house. You want the person who's built exquisite houses and has a portfolio of them to show and can talk about, all the things that make you feel nice about having a house,
[00:11:10] CJ: Yeah. And you can't do that without experience, right? You can't, you can't do that without actually getting your, you know, rolling your sleeves up, getting your hands dirty in the tool and actually doing it. And, what I'd like to say is I, I. Challenge you, you know, challenge anyone listening to this who's trying to figure out how to get started to set a timeline To say to yourself, okay, I'm gonna spend the next week or two weeks reading everything I possibly can about this specific thing. And then at the end of week two, I'm gonna get an instance and I'm gonna try to implement as much of this stuff as I. And I'm gonna fail at it, and I'm gonna be okay with it.
But at that two week point or that one week point, whatever that time frame is, it can't be longer than two weeks, You're gonna, you're gonna spin up an instance and you're get in there and you're gonna roll your sleeves up and you're gonna start building and you're going to fail, and you're gonna get better and you're gonna keep failing and you're gonna keep getting.
and I can guarantee you that if you spend two weeks reading and one week building, you will be much, much better after that week of building than you would have been if you spent that third week reading.
[00:12:16] Duke: there has been counter questions. That basically amount to, but how do I get from here to there? Like how do I get from where I am now, which is just like kinda like a definitional knowledge of the component to something that I can talk about in an interview. And I've broken this down a bit.
This is kind of new intellectual material for me. I look at my son who loves tools, He loves tools, he loves building, he loves being on little building projects with me. but if you just leave him with the tools, he won't think twice about grabbing a nail and trying to hammer it in with screwdriver.
[00:12:47] CJ: Yeah,
[00:12:47] Duke: to us it doesn't make sense. Why would you do that? It doesn't even, like, it doesn't , you know, it would confuse you. But he is learning important stuff about nails and screwdrivers. that goes right to his guts. It goes right to his guts. so what I would encourage people to do is as soon as you are taught something new, like, here's how a UI policy works, Go use it, but use it like a child would use it. I'm gonna practice UI policies, like anytime I'm gonna take an incident and anytime it's priority five, I'm gonna make the description mandatory. I'm gonna hide the short description, and I'm gonna make the caller read only. Does that make sense from an I till sense?
Absolutely not. Not even a little bit, but who cares, right? It's just that you learned, you used your will and your mind to determine an. Nonsensical as it may be, and then you use the tool to get to it. So you had a successful usage of the tool and you didn't waste any time. Oh, how do I get a a, a use case?
Where can I go online to find use cases that I can build, so that I can exercise? Screw it. Make your own exercise. Arnold Schwartzenegger, there's a story him, like He got drafted or something. I'm not, the details are fuzzy, but he was basically at a point in his life where he didn't have access to gyms, So he was out there with his weightlifting buddies. They were just like lifting rocks, like the biggest rocks they can find and how can we just make our exercises, hit the muscles anyway, even though we don't have hyper optimized gym equipment. That's the way you gotta think. use the tools as a child would use them and.
as you get comfortable with more and more tools, then you can think of coherent solutions. now I'm going to build an app.
[00:14:23] CJ: Right? , we'd be remiss if we didn't point out right, that we've done two podcasts on, what to build, right? Like one, uh, episode. Uh, God, we'll
[00:14:31] Duke: Yeah, yeah. What to build when you're prac. Yeah.
[00:14:34] CJ: We'll put it in the work, in the show notes here. Right.
[00:14:36] Duke: feel like you're not, yeah, if you don't feel like you're not there yet, again, just wield the tools like a child does
[00:14:41] CJ: yeah. Yeah,
[00:14:42] Duke: just practice with them. It doesn't matter if you build something profound or sensical, just that you know how it worked.
[00:14:49] CJ: Absolutely. I think that's the most important thing. It's just to get in there, roll your sleeves up, build, you know, knock, knock it around, man. Just get, just do you know whatever. Whatever you can figure out doing. And then understand, right? Cause you're reading the material anyway. So in theory, you're coming to the tool with the understanding of how it works.
Now you just need to actually demonstrate to yourself that, you know, how the tool. And it's gonna be a couple times, it's gonna do some things that you won't think that it'll do. And that's where you learn, right? Like, I've never learned through success. I always learned through failure. , you know, if I come to a, a situation and everything works exactly as I thought it was gonna work, what did I learn there?
Right? I've already, that means I already knew. You know, whatever it was that I was trying to accomplish, But if I get to a situation and implement based on what I think, and then it doesn't work, and it's like, oh man, this is a, a situation
[00:15:36] Duke: Yeah.
[00:15:38] CJ: right? So now it's like, okay, well how do I make it work?
And then that's where, that's where the learning happens. So, yeah, don't be scared of failure, right? I think there's a lot, a little bit of, a fear of failure that's intertwined in this, right? Like, you don't wanna pick up the tool because you're scared. Once you pick it up and you start doing stuff, you won't be able to do the things that you academically know how to do, and that's okay.
that's entirely the point actually, because as you walk through those things and as you fail on the things that you think, you know, you can one, go back and reference that material again, right? Reread it, go and find new courses or new, takes on it, or, Brute force it, right? You just bang at it and bang at it until you get the understanding that you need.
Because not everybody learns things the same, right? So you gotta figure out what works for you. But you can't skip that building phase.
You can't skip the actual doing the thing phase because you can't speak to it intelligently at the point where you'll want to, which is the job interview.
[00:16:32] Duke: Well, and speaking of interviews, I mean, that's always, that's always an FAQ question, right? ? Um, How do I succeed on the interview? And part of it, we've already said you have to have had time in the seat, in the tool. Cuz credibility is lever number one. It's the biggest lever, right?
If you can show credibility and have credibility, that's like three quarters of the battle done.
[00:16:55] CJ: Yeah.
[00:16:55] Duke: But there's other stuff too, right?
[00:16:57] CJ: Yeah. You know, dude, there's, there's a bunch of stuff and I wrote, um, you know, actually my last newsletter entry on this, , was about communication. And communication to me is the, is the number one thing you need to be successful on an interview outside of actual competence, right?
Like outside of, what you just said, duke, in terms of building. So you have the credibility when you walk in, right? communication is you, have that credibility internally. You gotta communicate it to the, to the other person or people so that they understand that you have it And so, you know, I've got a few points on this, but number one is know your. Are you interviewing with, technical folks? Are you interviewing with strategic folks like executives or are you interviewing with the recruiter, whoever you're interviewing with affects the style of the interview and, and has to affect the style of the communication that you affect in that interview, right?
When you're interviewing with a technical person, you want to go deep on what you know and what you've built, because they're, they're looking to hear. Sometimes it's certain words, but also it's certain experie. Lee, you say that you're good at Flow Designer. Tell me what you built and how you built it and what you learned over the course of building that thing.
Right? What was the problem that you were angling to solve? How'd you solve it with, with Flow Designer, and what were some of the takeaways that you had? Go deep on it. Don't brush, don't surface it, Because when I'm, if I'm a technical person, I'm thinking about, I need you on my team and I don't want, and I wanna see how much mensing I'm gonna have to do for you when you get.
How much technical mentoring I'm gonna have to do, uh, when is
[00:18:24] Duke: that's such a, that's such a good point. , you really have to understand what somebody wants when they're interviewing you,
[00:18:31] CJ: Yeah.
[00:18:32] Duke: , and what they want is to be able to have confidence that the person they pick, they know exactly what kind of situations they can drop them in and then leave.
[00:18:41] CJ: Yes.
[00:18:42] Duke: and this, this brings a whole bunch of stuff together. Cuz I see a lot on like resumes. Like, oh, I'm a fast learner and good at picking up new skills and it's just literally nobody cares. Uh, and oh it's a hard truth but it's still true cuz what they don't want to do is have to spend their time training. Right. And that's why it's so important to get neck deep in the tool and try and build stuff so that you have a body of work, even though nobody's paid you for that.
[00:19:11] CJ: Yeah.
[00:19:12] Duke: Okay? But you can have a body of work like, Hey, I built this. app, uh, trying to restock grocery stores or schedule, , the logistics for 18 wheelers or, or whatever it is.
you know, to manage an ice cream bike business, who cares? You at least then you can talk about the class, the type of problem that you have solved, and then in their head, without them even thinking about it, they already know like five or six things on site that they can drop you into and then leave and you're already providing. This person will take care of this thing for me. They are not there to teach you,
sucks, but is true. They're not there to teach you the new tool.
[00:19:51] CJ: and let me, let me elaborate too on that, duke, because I, think it's that part of it, right? Like knowing what they can drop you into and leave and that they are okay. Walking away from these tasks. Like I can give you, subsets, Y, through Z.
And I know you can handle that on your own. As you demonstrate that you can handle that on your own. It opens up, that inclination to mentor on other things, right? Because you've executed on the tasks that person was able to assign to you and walk away on, right? So it's building your internal credibility, once you get there.
Right. That then opens up the mentoring and opens up the training opportunities. But nobody wants to grab you off the shelf, right. And re and have to train you from zero to 60. I mean, some people do, right? Like, there are definitely avenues for that. And, Again, this is about knowing your audience, right?
When you're, when you're sitting down in an interview, some people are looking for completely raw. And we'll put the zero to 60 work in. but other people are looking at least for you to be at 20 maybe, or 10 or 15 or whatever, 25. They want you, they want to have something to work with. They wanna be able to know what tasks they can offload from them to you.
See how good you do with that, and then start scaling you up so they can offload more tasks. Right? Because they're not looking to run a training academy, right? this is a job, And they need people to actually do client.
[00:21:04] Duke: That's right. , they want somebody to do the work. They don't want to have to teach to do the work, and it's just like, that's a, it's a, it's a spectrum, right? It's not like a a, you know, they absolutely won't train you.
Nothing. Never. It's not that. It's just that when they are taking their own energy and time to vet candidates, it's because they want somebody, they can drop in and start. How much can this person do day one without me showing them the ropes, teaching them the tools, teaching them the ways of doing things.
So this is another thing, like why it's essential. To both understand the tools, but also learn to talk about the outcomes, right? Because it, amplifies the class of problem that you can be put on. So if they say, have you ever used Flow Designer? Yes, I know how Flow Designer works. I've used different logics and I've built a custom action and.
I put good logging in. I understand. So you're describing the technical capabilities of the tool and what you've used that basically says, okay, I can comfortably tell that person, here's a flow designer, I want you to build in this way, and I'll be confident that they can do it.
But if you told me I use a flow designer to, take orders, check inventory, And manage the communications based off of what it finds in the inventory and take a different path if inventory is empty versus inventory is full so that we could provision, I don't know, headsets, I'm like, oh, well the class of problem I can put that person on is this customer over here needs some problem solved, go solve their problem.
[00:22:34] CJ: Yeah.
[00:22:34] Duke: And it's a completely different class of. A higher class problem, if I may say so, you have more earning potential, . It's a bigger size problem. Am I right?
[00:22:45] CJ: No, you're absolutely right. ul. Ultimately, I fell in this business, everything is about solving problems, right? Like you're solving somebody's problem either at, you know, at the bottom. Or, you know, as you kind of move up the stack, right? Sometimes the problem is, you know, I want this filled to be readonly when a certain thing happens another time.
The thing might, the problem might be we need to track the inventory because we're, bleeding money and we don't feel like we're utilizing properly the headphones that we, that we're buying, right? And that might be the class of the problem, is a much bigger, but if you demonstrate that you've done something like that, you might get a bigger bucket problem, which ultimately over the course of your career opens up more opportunities.
Right? So, but you don't get there unless you, unless you build something. Right.
[00:23:27] Duke: Building.
[00:23:27] CJ: So that's, that's, you know, ultimately, we can always tie it back to, the experience of building something.
[00:23:33] Duke: Think about it this way too, like building to specification. The only way you can get scale on that, to be seen as a dragon slayer to command higher and higher. compensations is complexity is the only lever. you only get ahead there by being able to do more and more and more and more complex things.
If you're building to specification, but you're not there yet, you're at the. Okay, but if you can understand, what problem this person had and I utilized the tool to perform the outcome that they wanted. That whole like building to specification part almost isn't needed. right out the gate you show that you can take on a different class of problems.
Does that make sense?
[00:24:13] CJ: It does. and it's about again, right? It ties back into knowing your audience, and showing them what they wanna hear, like from a technical perspective, folks are looking to understand what you can do, and there's other, you know, audiences that you're gonna have too from a recruiting perspective, right?
Like they wanna know that you're completely well rounded, right? They want know that you can actually do the thing. They wanna know that you can communicate, that you can do the thing. And they want to know that, you know, you're going to be someone who's a sure bet or a solid bet on, putting them in front of their client cuz they get paid.
If you get.
[00:24:40] Duke: Yeah.
[00:24:40] CJ: looking for a more rounded, candidate. Right? So they're looking for , different skills, right? Not just the technical, but also communication and polish and things of that nature. ,
[00:24:50] Duke: It's funny, like the scale of experience of somebody that was, that's another question that comes up and it's like, what about when they say you need x years of experience? . Two years of experience. And what shocked me, I, I spoke to a large cohort of people last. And we were talking about the whole BA thing, and we won't go deep into that.
You can check out our episode, it'll be in the description below on what we think about B or what I think about bas
[00:25:17] CJ: Yeah,
[00:25:17] Duke: Um, uh, but what shocked me was a lot of people were picking the BA route because they felt the admin route was closed. They felt more often than not, admins have some kind of like minimum threshold of experience that needs to happen.
And the bas more often than not don't. And so it's like, let's just go for the BA role it shocked me that that was the reason.
[00:25:41] CJ: Right.
[00:25:42] Duke: And the reason it shocks me is that years of experience is not the goods, it's the token of the good.
[00:25:50] CJ: . Yeah. Dig into that one a little
[00:25:51] Duke: Okay. So it's like, think about money in general, right? Money is just a metaphor. it just prevents us from having to have dual coincidence of wants, right? Like, you want shoes, I want a steak, and you don't happen to have a steak, and I don't happen to have shoes, so we can't make a. Right. Or, or if I have the shoes, but you don't have a stake, we still can't make the trade. But if we have money, which is just a token of exchange, you can just give me money. I will give you the shoes and I will go buy a steak. Right. And so like years of experience is that weird thing in the middle of where it's like, uh, it doesn't really mean anything to anybody unless we use it to trade.
[00:26:29] CJ: It's, yeah, right. It's buying authenticity,
[00:26:31] Duke: That's right. And so it's like and here's something that's gonna be super, you get nothing out of the vid, nothing else out of this. Get this. It's that you can challenge those expectations. So if you get to a point where they're like, yeah, but do you have two years experience? The first thing I would do is challenge that obstacle.
okay, you want two years of experience, but tell me the skills that you hope I would achieve in that two years.
[00:26:54] CJ: Right.
[00:26:55] Duke: Because it might be something that you have
[00:26:58] CJ: Absolutely.
[00:26:59] Duke: They're, they're using two years as a token. They just, we assume that within two years you might have a come across this, and so you tell us two years, we accept that you might have it, you might have it.
[00:27:12] CJ: Yeah.
[00:27:12] Duke: think about all the times where it'd be like, okay, well we want a ServiceNow admin with two or five years experience, right? But when you get on site, you have your five years experience, you get on site and they're like, Hey, can you develop this service portal? And you're like, ah, dude, I'm not a portal developer.
[00:27:25] CJ: Right,
[00:27:26] Duke: Hopefully that would come out. Go
[00:27:28] CJ: yeah, they would've assumed that, you know, if you've got five years of experience in service now you've probably come across a portal and did some work there. But that's not always the case. Right.
[00:27:35] Duke: do. Sorry, I keep on interrupting you buddy. I'm so sorry. I'm just like so stoked today.
[00:27:41] CJ: And, and so, the important thing, and I like, I really love the way that you phrased that, right?
Is like when you say, I need someone with two years of experience. Tell me why. Right? Tell me what you're hoping to gain from a person with two years of experience. Then I could tell you if I already have that and we can talk about how I have that already and I can demonst. That I have that already, and we can get rid of this arbitrary token that's in the middle of the years of experience, right?
Because I'm brokering to you now, and I'm proving to you, that I've got the skill that you're actually looking for because you don't care about the experience, right? Like you care about the skills.
[00:28:12] Duke: It arbitrary is the thing too. Like you guys have no idea how weird the hiring process is. it could be you could have somebody who wants a ServiceNow admin . Who's desperate for it, who's like, get me. Anybody who can spell service now. And then that goes to somebody else who writes the job description.
That gets approval by somebody in hr. And you could have HR being like, oh, well it says developer. So they have to, they have to have cold fusion on there. That's on our developer template. They have to have three years experience cuz that's our best practice. that stuff. Half the time is coming from literally nowhere,
[00:28:45] CJ: Yeah. Yeah, you're right.
[00:28:46] Duke: Arbitrary is the best way to discuss to tackle it. And so your two rules, if they're giving you any kind of like X years experience, obstacle is number one, apply and let them decide. And number two, if they bring it up, challenge it. What specifically did you hope I would've learned in two years?
Because I think I might.
[00:29:06] CJ: and you know, there's a, there's a third one too here. Right. And if this is a situation where you're doing a formal application process, right, and they're requesting a cover letter and you know that, you know that they're asking for two years of experience, you've got six months. Right? Address that in the co cover letter.
Presumably they're asking for a cover letter to learn more about you and how that you, you relate to this particular job. Diffuse that time bomb up front. It's like you guys ask for two years of experience. You know, I don't have two years, but I do have, This is what I can do.
This is what I have done. And if you call me in, we interview, we can talk about it. Right. You
[00:29:43] Duke: Man, that's another one. I don't know what the question was they were saying, but know what you can do,
[00:29:49] CJ: Oh my God. so let me, let me jump in here and do it cuz this is one of the things, right, you know, because I tell people all the time, a resume isn't what you've done. A resume, it's about what you can do, ? , when you're selling yourself, you're going in and you're talking about the things that you can actually do and not so much all the stuff that you might have done in the past.
Now you not, where the stuff that you've done in the past is relevant, is key, because it also, Pivots into what you can actually do as well. Like there's so much stuff here in the, um, on the ServiceNow platform, that's relatable from one thing to the next, like incident management and problem management from a technical perspective, right?
Forms and data and lists, Acls, UI policies, it's all the same. If I can build out the requirements in incident management, I can build out the requirements in problem management, So there, so if somebody's asking me if I've done problem management and I've done incident management, I'll say, yeah, I can do problem management.
Notice how to phrase that. Yeah. I can do not, I have done, yeah, I can do problem management, right? Because I've have, I have the platform experience of knowing how this works. Now, if they're asking. Can I lead an engagement on problem management? And I've never led an engagement on problem management before and I'm not a domain expert on problem management, then the answer is obviously different.
But if they're wanting me to participate as a developer on in the problem management module, and I've built incident management, yeah, I can do that, right? Because it's all on the platform. It's all largely the same. There are some exceptions to that, right? Like you should never do anything at ITBM unless you've done stuff in itbm.
[00:31:24] Duke: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:31:26] CJ: it's just, or HR too, right? Like those are completely different things. , but for 80% of the platform, those experiences are transferable between modules, ? So don't get intimidated when someone asks you, if you've done something in problem management, if you've only done something in incident management, if you're just coming in to be a general platform developer in those modules.
[00:31:47] Duke: I would. Add carefully that you can't just say yes, right?
[00:31:52] CJ: Yeah,
[00:31:53] Duke: have to justify it a bit by saying like, okay, I haven't done problem management, but I've done incident management and they're basically processes of the same scale.
[00:32:00] CJ: Yeah. Right.
[00:32:01] Duke: I had this level of knowledge when I did implement incident management.
so how do you feel problem management would radically differ from that? Make them justify why it's so.
[00:32:11] CJ: and, and also tell them why it's the same, Like I've built UIs processes in, incident management, and I'm sure I can do, I mean, UI actions, I'm sure I can do UI actions and problem management because I mean, it's the same thing, just a different table. Once you've built the UI action somewhere, you can build a UI action anywhere sort of thing, right? So make make those comparisons. Make them understand that what they're asking for, even if you only, if you're missing 20% of the thing that they're asking for, 80% of your skill set is transferable.
And so it's not as big of a deal as it looks.
[00:32:40] Duke: being able to articulate what you can do just comes down to understanding that they are looking for ways they can drop you into the fray and leave. So the more things you could say, I know how to do flow Designer, here's something I did on Flow Designer, right? Here are the outcomes.
I know how to develop a portal. Here's a portal that I built and the outcomes it created. I know how to, you know what I mean? As long as you can articulate the kinds of build you can do
[00:33:06] CJ: Yeah.
[00:33:06] Duke: not just say, yes, I know flow designer, cuz that literally means nothing, right? It's too vague. articulating that is just telling the interviewer, here's exactly where you can place me with zero energy on your own.
Like, when can I start?
[00:33:20] CJ: Right.
[00:33:21] Duke: Anyways, we are at 40 minutes. Uh, is there any , is there anything else you wanna cover, Corey or.
[00:33:26] CJ: I mean, duke, we, we covered a lot here. The wrap on it is probably, that we encourage you all to build, right? build as quickly as possible. And if you're still nervous about building and you can't make yourself jump into it, set a, definitive time at which you're going to build regardless, right?
Because you can't get any further unless you. Um, you know, communication, when you start talk, thinking about interviews, right?
Like it is all about knowing your audience, right? Listening actively, it's about body language tone and demeanor, right? Like, and it's, and it's about being clear, You know, expressing yourself clearly. And then, you know, at the end of the day, it's like the years of experience don't matter. It's the skill, right?
It's that, you know, user of experience, like you said, it's that token, right? It's an arbitrary token that's meant to represent the skill that they're looking. You can diffuse that by going straight to the skill set.
[00:34:16] Duke: That's a great place to leave it. just a couple things folks. if you are in one of these bootcamps and you want to be like, Corey and I are thinking about doing kind of a weekly, powwow, , FAQ session. So if you want to be in on that, please reach out to us. if you are still stuck on what to build, also please reach out to us and, , man, just reach out to us, , we're here to help you.
[00:34:37] CJ: Yeah, no doubt. We're here, so if you need us, we're reach out
[00:34:40] Duke: see you on the next.
[00:34:42] CJ: later.