Most Active Speaker

Taylor Desseyn

Taylor Desseyn

Talent Advocate - Gun.io

Taylor is a skilled people connector, dedicated to helping individuals find their perfect career fit. With over 10+ years of expertise in facilitating ideal matches within the IT industry, he has successfully helped over 600+ engineers find their dream jobs. Recently, Taylor embraced a new path, delving into the world of software engineering, and is now a dedicated Talent Advocate at Gun.io.

Taylor's knack for creating community shines through his use of social media and content creation. He's a team-scaling expert, with an emphasis on team growth happening the right way. Currently, his focus is helping job seekers find opportunities faster and engineering leaders hire more efficiently.

Beyond recruitment, Taylor hosts podcasts, engages with an ever-growing texting/email community, and speaks at conferences-- all to build a thriving tech community nationwide. His mission is simple yet impactful: to show people they’re not alone in the job search while providing valuable support and insights every step of the way.

Awards

  • Most Active Speaker 2023

Humanizing Hiring in Tech w/Kelly Vaughn

Hiring in tech is broken. With so much competition out there for seemingly limited roles, how do you make yourself stand out in the application and interview process? And what can hiring managers do to make interviewing a less painful experience for everyone? Join Kelly Vaughn (hiring manager) and Taylor Desseyn (technical recruiter) for an unfiltered look at how to play—and win—the hiring game.

You're Not Alone

Growing throughout your career can be daunting. Lots of times people feel like they are alone in their struggles but at the end of the day, everyone deals with the same difficulties. This talk is an encouraging word for folks to get out there and be fearless and take their career and lives by their own hands and lean on others to get to where they want to go.

Something I am SUPER passionate about is letting people realize they are not alone in what they are dealing with. Because of the last few years with COVID and talking to thousands of IT individuals they all say the same thing... 'I feel alone'. Well, this talk is to show folks you are NOT alone in what you are dealing with. I will be pulling a lot of examples from my own personal life as well as my professional life and sharing those to encourage others not to be afraid. To reach out to others for help. My goal after this conversation is for people to be more curious and open to talking to strangers than before they walked in the room.

Unlocking Your Career Potential

So many people are so paralyzed in their careers. They don't know how to get started. They don't know where to begin. And on top of everything they do not know what's out there!! This talk is going to be focused on unlocking the potential inside of you to grow yourself and your career.

This is a playbook for everyone in tech to be more successful on their next job search not to mention help folks level up their careers. I highlight the following topics: networking, how to work with recruiters, how to come prepared to interview, the power of having a good resume/LinkedIn profile and much much more. This is more of a pure Q&A talk which always turns out to be AMAZING.

Exposing the Interview Process

Interviewing needs to be a two-sided conversation and that is exactly what this talk is focused on. My goal is to talk to engineering leaders on processes to put in place to help scale their internal teams more efficiently as well as a 'peel behind the onion' type of talk for job seekers on things to look out for during the interviewing process. This is a conversation about a bunch of topics that are usually not talked about publicly.

After being a part of hiring conversations from startups to enterprise tech companies for the last 12 years I have had the opportunity to see what works and what doesn't for technical interviewing. This conversation will help both parties (job seekers and hiring managers) be more aware of how to fix the pitfalls of the hiring process.

Leveraging Social Media to Find Your Dream Job

Networking pre-covid was awkward...let's face it. It was showing up to a meetup or a conference and you only hung out with the few people you knew. You watched 45 slides on a topic that you don't understand only to leave the session and be even more confused. You then leave the networking event almost feeling worse than before (it maybe was the pizza), AND you didn't meet anyone new. Well, networking has changed, especially because of Covid. In this session, I dig into how to leverage social media platforms like Linkedin/Twitter specifically to find your next opportunity.

Every since COVID hit in 2020 I have become fascinated with how people communicate online. After going through the job search myself this past year, I realized the power of networking over social media long before you ever need anything from your community. This talk is from my personal experiences not to mention the countless conversations with folks I've had in the engineering world that have put themselves out on there and have only benefited from it.

Leveraging Content and Community to Grow Your Career

Over the last few years I switched my business from outbound/cold calls to content creation. With that transition came a lot of learning lessons and a lot of interest from others on how I got started. This talk is focused on everything I have learned over the last few years to encourage others to get started creating content on their own.

In this talk I will specifically focus in on how to start creating content, which platforms are best to start your journey on, and how to execute day in day out to stay consistent.

Taylor Desseyn

Talent Advocate - Gun.io