Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva 0:00
Are employees more productive in the office? As Amazon announced that all employees must work in the office five days a week. In a few days, we’ll cover more about the job market, what’s to come, as well as what this podcast is going to bring you as a listener.

Chris Villanueva 0:16
Oh my gosh. The holidays, what an amazing season, and what a year it was. Just can’t believe that we’re really wrapping up 2024 here. I hope all of you had an amazing holiday season. I did spend a lot of that time moving, actually, from Austin to San Antonio, and just got to say it was amazing to spend time with the family, ate lots of those Christmas cookies. My family and I actually found an abandoned black cat in a bag and just put next to a dumpster.

Chris Villanueva 0:51
So what we did was we rescued that cat, and we are looking for somebody to adopt it. So kind of a bittersweet moment. On one end, how can somebody leave a cat by a dumpster On another hand, I’m really glad that we found and saved this animal here. So let us talk about what is coming up for the job search. Man, I know, this past year was insane.

Chris Villanueva 1:15
We saw that hiring was more of a disappointment than anything. I know I felt it because we work with a lot of clients who were dealing with it in October, for example, we saw that the BLS reported Non Farm Payroll growth of just 12,000 my gosh, the worst month that we’ve seen since December of 2020, things bounced back a little bit as Total non farm was 227,000 which was a recovery, but it seemed like this past year was just really tough for job seekers.

Chris Villanueva 1:48
There was an article on ABC News saying that so many job seekers were spending months struggling, looking for work, which was a big change from the last two years here. So if you are one of those people, you’ll want to listen into this podcast, because we’ll have lots of advice for you coming up in future episodes. But we are here with you, and we are here to support you through whatever is coming next. Amazon announced that all employees must work in office five days a week starting January 2, that is in a few days here.

Chris Villanueva 2:21
This decision has angered a lot of employees, according to 73% of the surveyed employees, they did consider quitting Amazon, and employees describe this as non data driven and just driven as something that could damage company culture here. So what I believe is going to happen is we’re going to see a lot of companies making the push for people to return, return back to the office, and a lot less remote positions are going to be available. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to exist, and it certainly is going to be different than the last five years, but it is going to be harder to find remote work. In an interview with The Seattle Times last week, the leadership at Amazon basically doubled down on their decision, confirming that they believe employees work better when they are in the office together.

Chris Villanueva 3:21
Now, I personally believe that remote work is a beautiful thing. In fact, we have built an amazing business here at Let’s see grandma through remote work. I love to work remotely. There are studies, however, that do say that fully remote work is associated with a 10% drop in productivity. Basically, this was found in a Stanford study, as well as a National Bureau of Economic Research suggesting that employees who are remote workers are less productive.

Chris Villanueva 3:52
Now, the thing that this, these studies do not take account for, are things like cost savings. You know, for example, do, for example, do companies save money by not having employees come into the office by virtue of real estate costs? Are employees happier? Are they going to ultimately stay with you longer? Which is going to increase your profitability? Things like that are very hard to track, but that is the one thing that I think these studies are missing that can influence whether or not this is going to be a good decision to have people return back to the office.

Chris Villanueva 4:33
So I believe, actually, that hybrid work is something that many companies should consider in fact, that same Stanford study found that hybrid work appeared to have no impact on productivity. So imagine that you get the best of both worlds. You have employees who are productive, people who feel like they have a connection with their boss, and there are coworkers i. Yet at the same time, they are sparing themselves of the commute and the lost productivity that will come with, you know, those office politics that come and things like that.

Chris Villanueva 5:12
So I believe, of course, as employees, we should keep fighting for the thing that is going to make us happier. We should fight for the thing that is going to be best for ourselves, for our family, and continue really to negotiate with employers. This upcoming year, we just had a workshop with Marin Roberts Huntley, and talking about negotiation remote work is absolutely something that you should feel like you can negotiate after getting a job offer, and know that that is one of the things that is more than likely going to be on the table, especially as companies have been coming out of the pandemic, time in which we have been all remote.

Chris Villanueva 5:56
So take advantage of this time. Remote work, of course, is going to be here to stay, but know that there’s going to be some pushback along the way. All right, so this is a end of the year recap episode as well. I just want to say we have some content coming up that will help you boost your resume, boost your LinkedIn profile interviews, things like that. But I want to talk about what is going to come in this upcoming year, I’m so excited about this. We’re going to see more guest episodes.

Chris Villanueva 6:25
We’re going to be bringing back career experts to talk about things like culture, mental health, personal finance, stuff that our resume service typically doesn’t talk about, but we know is going to help you increase your own value. And happiness, satisfaction, all that stuff. We’re also going to be looking at the data. What do our clients want to hear from this podcast? What do episode numbers say? What are some of the most highly searched for topics in the career world? So just expect that the episodes coming from this podcast are going to be relevant to you as the job seeker, and we’re going to be listening more than ever on the stuff that you are demanding here. Tactical resume advice will still be around, and I’d say better than ever. Will we be returning back to weekly episodes? I don’t know.

Chris Villanueva 7:20
It is quite possible that you may see more frequency in this podcast, which I’m excited about, maybe a sneak preview, maybe not. But we are going to be taking questions from you directly, as job seekers, about your resumes, and be answering those in this podcast as well. Here we’re going to be bringing in a wider and exciting range of content as well. So what I brought about the things that I told you about, such as the report, the jolts report, as well as the return to work mandates, LinkedIn use and things that affect you as a job seeker, those are going to be the things I hammer home, home on I’ll try to keep it as relevant as possible to the job search advice and use that is going to help and affect you immediately, but you are going to see the content getting more topical.

Chris Villanueva 8:13
In this way, our YouTube and LinkedIn presence is growing a bit. We’ve primarily been on Spotify and Apple as far as our listener reach goes, but we are going to be releasing more video content and even better video content. Shout out to our podcast editor. AJ, who’s done a great job. We love you. AJ, but yeah, we’re going to be connecting with you as best as we possibly can in the upcoming year. So this episode as an update, I want to just leave on a very positive note. Yes, this was a crazy year, and yes, 2025 we don’t know what’s going to come, but I have every hope that you as the job seeker are going to see some amazing things in your life because you are here listening to the very end of this episode.

Chris Villanueva 9:04
You are committed, and I know that with your own belief, with your own hope and your own persistence and sometimes struggle, eventually good and amazing things will happen to you. I just know it here. So thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have an amazing kickoff to your year. January has some amazing things coming. So Happy New Year, and I’ll see you next time you.