Why Hiring Feels Broken—and How to Get Hired Anyway, with Lorena Prego Ojeda
Career Sessions
In this episode of Career Sessions, J.R. Lowry speaks with Lorena Prego Ojeda, founder and CEO of Prometeo Talent, about the evolving challenges in today's hiring landscape. Drawing
Key takeaways
- Hiring managers are often untrained and rely on gut feelings rather than structured evaluation, so candidates must proactively communicate their value.
- Remote work has dramatically expanded talent pools, with 87% of Lorena's clients hiring globally regardless of location.
Main topics
- AI in recruitment
- Remote hiring trends
Notable quotes
"You have to be able to present yourself even though the hiring manager is a bad interviewer."
"The strongest candidates connect the dots, they explain their impact, they make it easy for employers to see why they're the right fit."
Conclusion
The hiring process may feel broken, but it's more about misaligned expectations
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Finding a job never feels easy, but I think for a lot of people right now, it feels harder than ever. You submit dozens, perhaps even hundreds of applications, and you hear nothing back. You spend hours tailoring your resume, only to wonder if a human being is even going to look at it. You hear that AI is screening candidates, recruiters are overwhelmed, and companies can't find the right talent. So which is it? Why does hiring seem broken for everyone right now? And in today's episode, we're going to go behind the curtain and talk about how hiring works with somebody who does it for a living. My guest is Lorena Prego, who is the founder and CEO of Prometeo Talent. Over the past two decades, she has helped companies make more than 5,000 hiring decisions, particularly in technology and engineering. That gives her a unique perspective on what separates candidates who consistently land great opportunities from those who struggle, even when their qualifications may look the same on paper. We'll talk about how AI is changing recruiting, what recruiters actually look for, the biggest mistakes candidates make, how to build relationships with search firms before you need them, what catches a recruiter's attention, what skills will matter more as AI continues to shape the economy. So whether you are actively looking for your next role, hoping to future-proof your career, or responsible for hiring great people yourself, This conversation will be packed with lots of practical advice that you can start using immediately. So let's get started. I'm J.R. Lowry. Lorena, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank Speaker 1 (1:29) you, J.R. Looking Speaker 2 (1:31) forward to our conversation. You have been involved in a lot of hiring over the years. You think something like 5,000 people you have been involved in the hiring of. What's fundamentally different about hiring today compared with even five years ago or when you started your business? Speaker 1 (1:47) Well. I started in 2010, my business, and I've been a recruiter for the last 20 years. So it changed many times in many ways. But lately, what it changed, of course, everybody's talking about AI and technology. And of course, right now, companies have access to a lot of information of candidates, huge databases of candidates. So that changed a lot. And we use a lot of AI tools. We use tools with AI as well. So it changed in that way. I Speaker 2 (2:22) want to come back to AI later, but across these hiring decisions, what separates the candidates who consistently get offers from those who seem on paper equally qualified but don't end up getting the nod in the end? Well, Speaker 1 (2:34) in my perspective, first of all, candidates that are able to communicate properly their experience. I always say to candidates like, You have to be prepared that the interviewer is not very good interviewing. Hiring managers are not used to do interviews. So they are managers and once in a while they have to interview people and they're not usually trained properly. So you have to be able to present yourself even though the hiring manager is a bad interviewer. So communication is very important. Preparation is another thing that is very important. gather information of the company you're applying for, organize the things you want to express and communicate in that interview. That's important. Yeah, Speaker 2 (3:19) I think that point, not all hiring managers are good interviewers. And you'll get some who will have a checklist of questions. They're going to run you through methodically. You'll get others who will just want to have a casual conversation. Your job is to make sure you get your message across no matter what. And I think for a lot of candidates, They'll respond to the questions and think they're doing great. They'll respond to the conversation and think they're doing great, but they're missing the opportunity to get their message across. Speaker 1 (3:41) Correct. And I mean, sometimes I go with hiring managers to interview the final candidates and their interviews are like, I remember once that I was having an interview with a hiring manager, final interviewer. And I said, hey, I want to see the way you interview and everything. And the interview was a hiring manager talking all the time. Candidate didn't say anything. And at the end, the hiring manager said, yeah, I love this candidate. And I said, why? Well, I like her. And I was like, why she want to change now? I don't know. What is she doing right now? Because she's without a job. Well, I don't know. And so I asked him like two or three things and he said, oh my God, I think I should do this interview again. So I was like. I mean, usually hiring managers are based on feelings. And I like this person. I identify with this person. This person went to the same university or did the same path. And this is crazy. So it's like you should try to prepare yourself and organize the things you want to communicate because this person you have in front of you is a manager, not an interviewer. Speaker 2 (4:47) Yeah. And a lot of them never get trained on how to do an interview, which is just mind blowing to me. Speaker 1 (4:52) Correct. And it's not that frequent for a manager to do interviews, so they forget. So it's not them to blame. It's like, it is what it is. Candidates do not understand this. And you have, as a candidate, a lot of power in you to be able to have more chances to get hired. Speaker 2 (5:09) That's very true, because when you're out doing interviewing, you're doing a lot of them, right? So you're better practiced coming into that interview than the hiring manager is going to be. And I think you just need to remind yourself, I'm here to make sure they know this. And even if they don't ask those questions, I got to make sure that that gets across. And Speaker 1 (5:26) if you asked me, like, for me, this is fascinating because I do interviews all day and I love interviews and I love interactions. But if you ask me one book that helps everybody to do better interviews is The Way to Make Friends. They've got Carnegie. Yeah. How to Win Speaker 2 (5:44) Friends and Influence People. Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:46) Yeah. Because at the end, you have a person that with small things like thank you and things like you want for them to like you. And that gives you a huge advantage. It's a small thing. It is. But at the end, you have a person in front of you that needs to like you to work with you at the end of the day. Right. It Speaker 2 (6:04) does matter. But I think sometimes we overemphasize. Do I like this person? Do I think they'll fit into the team? And we don't. zero in hard enough on their actual technical skills. And you've got to get at both if you're the interviewer. Speaker 1 (6:16) Yeah, that's why as recruiters, we train hiring managers as much as we can or we are allowed to. But we are not always allowed to do that. Speaker 2 (6:26) Yeah. Has remote work significantly changed how companies think about who they are willing to consider in their hiring pool relative to what might have existed pre-COVID? It Speaker 1 (6:37) changed dramatically. in a huge, huge way, the way we work as well in our company, Prometeo, because right now our clients are asking for time zones. They don't care about countries or cities. So they ask for, I like this time zone plus two hours. So we do look at the map and search for people where they want to search. And it changed everything because Before that, you had to be in a city or in a specific place to have more chances to be hired. But now you can be in a small town where cost of living is lower and you're able to have a great job as well. I Speaker 2 (7:21) just thought of curiosity, what percent of jobs that you're involved in, are they willing to consider a remote candidate? All of them. Really? Wow. Speaker 1 (7:29) All of our clients search for remote talent. 87 % of our clients are in the