Career Growth Advice from Keiyana Arnold, Former Big Tech Recruiter | Career Tips for Women in Technology

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 129
Featuring Keiyana Arnold

Episode Title: #129 Keiyana Arnold, A Former Recruiter at Meta, Twitter, and CNN Tells All

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Keiyana Arnold


Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there, my name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the 2B Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. 2B Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation. Hi. Hey. Have you ever wondered what it really takes to land a job at a tech company like Meta or Twitter? Or how to stand out in today's competitive job market? I'm your host, Mary Killelea, and today's guest on the 2B Bolder podcast has spent over a decade behind the scenes at some of the biggest names in tech, helping people land life-changing opportunities.

Joining me is Keiyana Arnold, a former Fang recruiter with experience at Meta, Twitter, and CNN. Now, she's channeling everything she's learned into her coaching creator business called Professional Love Letters, which I just love that name. It's a love letter to her career and a way to pay it forward to job seekers and professionals looking to grow. Keiyana, thank you so much for joining me. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Keiyana Arnold (Guest): Thank you, Mary. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here, too.

Mary Killelea: Thank you. I know we were chatting off screen just a few minutes ago and I wanted to save all the good juicy stuff because like you've got some really good tidbits to share. But first, take me back or the audience back all of us kind of your experiences working at the various big brands and then also kind of what you did there and how it led you to your current career.

Keiyana Arnold: Thank you Mary. Okay. So, if I take you back over a decade ago, I have been in tech starting in about 2014 is when I really dipped my toes into the water. I got my big break at Twitter. I've also worked at CNN, United Airlines, and most recently Meta doing recruitment strategy, onboarding, performance. I've led teams. I've created training and more than anything, I have been a pillar and a really big piece of creating culture at these companies and brands. So, I'm really proud of the work that I've done. After leaving Meta, I've really taken the opportunity to dive into this work formally on my own and with my own brand. And I think that started from a lot of the LinkedIn content creation that I was making about the work that I was doing. And it really started to get some traction and buzz. And when I saw how much the DMs, the comments were flooding in with how much I was supporting and empowering other people in their careers and in their journeys, I just knew that this was an opportunity for me to do something at a larger scale. And what better place to start building a brand than with yourself? And here I am. A professional love letter has landed me opportunities to gain brand partnerships. Fi app is one of them. And that's how you and I actually connected and made our introduction to each other. And so here we are today. I'm really excited to chop it up and share as much as I can with job seekers or with creatives, entrepreneurs, or anyone who just has a dream and wants to go for it. That's what I'm all about.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome that you touch on who you serve because that was one of my questions. You really do, the quality of your content is exceptional. So, I want to give you a shout out on that. But also in your jobs going from the companies that you mentioned, did you have a strategic approach when you pivoted from one company to the other? Was it intentional? And what advice do you have for other women around kind of creating a career strategy?

Keiyana Arnold: I think early in my career, no one goes to college to become a recruiter or culture strategy. Like what is that, right? And so I think in undergrad I was naturally a person to adopt like lots of different hobbies. As you can see I'm a multi-hyphenate. I have lots of interests and so I was on a lot of different clubs, I was a student ambassador. I was also captain of the basketball team in college and so I was really active and that in itself I think landed me to an expansive network in college and the admissions department actually asked me to stay with this the school and my alma mater graduate days and start to recruit for the college and so that kind of was my gateway into recruitment traveling to different states in the surrounding area high schools doing presentations. And it wasn't until I joined corporate after grad school and learned that there were positions where you could actually recruit internally from these corporate organizations. And I think that's when my mind was kind of opened up to the idea that most larger brands and organizations have the same type of setup when it comes to having a recruitment organization. And so that not only triggered in my mind that I have the transferable skills, but it also taught me how to get into these other companies, right? And that it's possible. It's almost like I say I worked at Twitter and I worked at Facebook and people look at me like I'm a unicorn or this is impossible.

Mary Killelea: Yeah.

Keiyana Arnold: But it's not. And so just having my presence online and being a pillar of representation and support with my coaching and exposing people to this idea and the concept and demystifying that whole process. It's been a joy and so I think that is what kind of sparked the idea for me.

Mary Killelea: Okay. So, the big brands, you know, Twitter, Meta, and even CNN, they're so distinctly different. And I worked for Intel for a while. And I'm telling you, it was like getting an MBA working for those companies because, you know, they're all about efficiency. They're about procedures. They're about operations and hitting the ground, running at full speed. What are some good takeaways? How would you kind of load this with two questions, but culture-wise between the different companies for someone's who's listening who might want to think about, oh, maybe I want a job at Meta, what that would be like versus CNN.

Keiyana Arnold: Yeah. You know, I mentioned that early in my career, I kind of stumbled into this space. And it wasn't until I got to CNN and United Airlines is when I really started to understand the concept that I was in a training ground. You know these companies I'm taking away so much knowledge and being able to experience the Twitter to then CNN and then United that gave me a very large variety of industries to witness and observe to be a part of and even though the industries are so different there are similar components and it's all about being open and essentially we're all trying to do the same thing. There's usually some type of service or product, right? We want to keep the business going, but where I come in, it's more so internally. And how do we keep the employees motivated? How do we bring the best talent in? And so, I started to learn how to do that for one industry, another, and then it kind of unlocked a formula for me. And so, I'm thinking about where this is actually taking me. And you're right with these companies, they do have very high performance standards and especially at Meta where performance is like measured like a metric of success same as like your goals and honestly I love those environments because like I said it was a training ground and it's almost like I get to soak up and learn and absorb so much and now where I am in my career is paying that knowledge forward to others helping them up level and if I do go back into a corporation, I'm going to make sure that it's an environment that can challenge me on the same level, if not higher. It's been a treat really to experience the evolution of my early career to where I am now 10 years later.

Mary Killelea: So, let me get your assessment on the current job market. Personally, from where I sit looks pretty bleak. You're dealing with people all the time. Tell me what you're hearing. What kind of advice do you give those people who are feeling a little down?

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Keiyana Arnold: Yeah, bleak is not the word. I like to use dumpster fire. This job market is like a shark tank really and it's about I say there are a few elements about this job market and then there's the talent. I think the job market is interesting. It's hard to avoid bias and subjectivity in the job market right now because there is such a high volume of candidates. It's actually an employer's market. And so what that means is there are more candidates than there are jobs available. And so that means that these employers and hiring teams are probably getting bombarded with thousands of applications sometimes in a day. And if you think of it, if I'm one recruiter recruiting for one role and there's 1,000 applicants coming in a day or even a week, it's humanly impossible to keep up with that level of volume. And so the job market, the hiring teams are finding ways to filter through candidates quickly. And so with so many candidates submitting applications, there are filters within the applicant tracking systems that identify only the software engineers from that list, right? Because they're looking for a software engineer. And a lot of times there are candidates who are maybe trying to pivot from HR into software engineering and they're trying to shoot their shot, but they're not even getting seen because of the filters that are happening. In one layer further than that, referrals, they are taking priority because the company wants to take in candidates who have already been vetted, right? They're all looking to hire.

Keiyana Arnold: They needed candidates yesterday for these roles and they want you to be able to come in, hit the ground running, move fast. And so when I take that job market and all of the chaos that's happening, I think about the candidates and one of my first series when I started with the content creation was if I were a job seeker because I remember as a recruiter I was like okay if I was a job seeker I would be doing this and this and this because I was actually seeing the candidates who were catching my attention. I was the one doing the filtering behind the scenes and I was working with these hiring teams and the referrals and there's also data to back up referral percentage of hire versus someone who is just applying and my series if I were a job seeker became my reality when I stepped out of corporate and I want to say maybe this was my opportunity to test out my theory and what I've seen is it's not about your resume. So many candidates are focused on who can tailor my resume? How many AI systems can do this? And then on top of that, how can mass apply to 50 jobs a day for me? I saw a question in my channel on five yesterday asking for a software that can apply to 20 jobs a day. And my question in my mind was, why would you want to apply to 20 jobs a day? Do you know who these companies are? Have you read the job description? This is even something that you're qualified for. Who knows? But the name of the game is your network and it's being seen. If there was a field of grass, you're in a meadow and there's one big colorful flower sticking out, you're immediately going to be drawn to that flower. You might want to get closer to it. You might want to smell it because it's different. It's it's beautiful color. And I think of the job application process the same way. You've got a grass metal full of thousands of candidates and you've got one that was presented to you by someone like a flower and it's just like an easy pull. It's someone who is qualified for the job. They're ready to go and you walk away with that flower and you leave the grass behind.

Mary Killelea: So, how important is it for job seekers or even people trying to build thought leadership to be on LinkedIn?

Keiyana Arnold: Oh my goodness, it's so important. I think if I could speak to candidates right now and talk to these job seekers, if you have an Instagram profile, if you have a TikTok, if you have Facebook, if you have X, then you need to be on LinkedIn. You need to be on LinkedIn. You're already posting content for your personal profiles or even you're just searching through the content, LinkedIn has easy access to the decision makers, to the hiring teams and you don't even know who's watching you. You really don't. And I think that's a little bit of the intimidation of LinkedIn. It becomes real, right? Like, oh, I've really got an audience. I could get in trouble. This could impact my livelihood. And I would say leverage LinkedIn as an ongoing virtual portfolio and resume that you're continuing to update and showcase. Would you be afraid to submit 20 applications a day to these employers? What's the difference between mass submitting your application right online as content and 30% of LinkedIn users are creating content right now. That's not a very high number. And with the LinkedIn algorithm, they're placing priority and boosting your visibility for those that are creating content. So, the numbers are actually there because if you are posting, whether it's a sentence, a poll, maybe it's a photo of yourself or work that you've done, you're boosting your odds already for visibility. I still to this day get every week employers in my DM asking me for interviews. you slid in my DMs asking me for a podcast request for brand partnerships, all of this is happening in the DMs, but it starts in your posts and it starts in the comments. And so, if you're already on social media, find a way to get past the learning curve of LinkedIn. Start to play with it. At minimum, start to comment on posts. Whether it's great, I love this, or maybe you have something to add. These are all ways of engaging, especially if you're engaging with the hiring teams. Remember, they're content creators, too, and they want to boost their visibility in the algorithm, so they're going to appreciate you later.

Mary Killelea: Absolutely. No, that's dead on. I love talking about personal brands and building thought leadership. What advice do you have? I think people get so wrapped up in fear of I don't want to voice my opinion because I might piss off someone or it might not be pleasing to everyone or I don't know I don't really know I don't have an opinion. I'm too scared to have an opinion. Like what do you say to those people?

Keiyana Arnold: Yeah. You know, I work one-on-one coaching clients every single week and I coach them on their career transitions. Maybe they're making a pivot, but oftentimes it's either a job search or someone who wants to expand their brand online. And it's a very common thread that I see in both types of clientele. And it's all about confidence, self-esteem, really being able to put yourself out there without any apology. And it's very difficult to do, especially in this generation where I think over the decades, we've all had to kind of push through some type of barrier, some type of like we're doing something new. We're trying something progressive or different. And different doesn't always land well, right? I think when it comes to confidence, you really have to have an anchor of your own. Whether you are working for one of the biggest brands of Google or on Meta or any of these fang companies, remember that you also have a brand and at any given moment, these companies can lay you off. We've seen this happen time and time again. And then what happens to your brand? Some people think that it's gone. It's done. I'm stuck. I don't have an identity. But you are the brand. They hired you for a reason out of these thousands of applicants when you started, right? There's something special and unique and value that you can add. And so I say look within. Remember who you are. The proof is in the concept. You've done these jobs before. And if you could anchor yourself in why you're doing it, I think that's what's gonna take people farther. And once you push past the okay, how am I going to do it? Why am I doing it? Then you do it, something good is going to happen. I don't care if it's one like, if it's one DM, if it's one text message. I got a random WhatsApp message the other night from an old friend. We haven't seen each other in years, but we met maybe in 2018. And she WhatsApp messages me. She lives in a different country and she's like, "I have been following you on LinkedIn. You might not know it, but it's been watching you. I'm listening to your content. You know what you're talking about, and I want to offer you an opportunity to come into my new organization and consult with us." That would have never happened.

Mary Killelea: Yeah.

Keiyana Arnold: And you know, lately there's been some funky things happening with the algorithm. I just hit 10K followers at the beginning of the year. I'm excited, but lately I've only been getting like 20 likes here, 15 there, and it used to be more like 300, 400. And I've just been like, is it my content? I don't know. Just keep going. And to get that message the other night, it was just a light bulb and a reminder for me to just keep moving and something will happen. I mean, you never know who's watching.

Mary Killelea: No, you're absolutely right. And it's so on any platform, whether it's Tik Tok or whatever, you just can't get too consumed with the numbers. I mean, it's good to study what's working and what's not working. Yeah. But when you your identity or your obsession becomes the numbers, then you're losing the point because like what you said, you are impacting people even if they're not ready for you today, they're absorbing and you're helping them in some way, which you know, I get great happiness from, you know, just knowing that.

Keiyana Arnold: Let me fill you in on a secret,

Mary Killelea: Okay

Keiyana Arnold: With these content creators and influencers. I have a creator on my resume and my profile. Content creation is a vehicle. It's not what I consider my career. What my career is is my brand and who I am. And I showcase what I'm doing online and maybe I tell a story, right? And that's like the creative process of it. But there's also people who just send their film to an editing team and say, "Put this together." But the vehicle is the platform that you're on. And that content is used to then monetize in other ways outside of what you're actually seeing. And so you don't have to be a content creator. You just have to put it out there and use the platforms for what they were designed to be, a platform for connection and for you to do something more than what we see online.

Mary Killelea: So let's talk about a professional love letter to your company. U tell me how you came up with the name. I think we touched on it earlier but reiterate who you serve and what kind of offerings you have.

Keiyana Arnold: Oh my gosh. I started a professional love letter. I really got in the weeds of business probably around August, September of 2024, but the name came to me in March. March was very significant for me, March 2024. I had a health emergency where I actually was rushed to the ER on a random day. I think it was a Tuesday. I had severe abdominal pain. Every hour my health was declining and after three hours I was in a wheelchair unable to walk. After getting the X-rays in the ER, they noticed that I had fibroids, four of them, that were double the size of my uterus. And it was shocking for me. It was abrupt. I was in the middle of training for a half marathon that was supposed to happen weeks later. And the doctors were telling me you need emergency surgery. And so I started doing research. Well, how could this happen to me? I was active, you know, I was eating well. And stress is something that can significantly expedite the growth of your fibroids. And something on top of that, the research that I found was that 70% of women by the time they turn 50, especially if you are a woman of color, you will have fibroids. And once I started sharing my story online, I started getting more DMs of women who were like, "Yeah, I went through that same surgery or I have had some sort of uterus surgery." And a lot of that comes from our diet. It comes from our activity and it comes from your levels of stress. And so this was like a hard awakening for me in where I was in my level of burnout and where I was and just my level of exhausting myself for the sake of another brand. And I started to write to myself about you know what are my anchors? What do I care about? And the number one thing was my health. Immediately health was probably number I don't know before that situation happened but it became number one and then I thought okay what's important to me after that and it was my community because I had community surrounding me with love my partner she my fiance now she actually put together a meal train spreadsheet for us we had so many people just come in and support as we needed it through this this time. It was a nine-week recovery. I couldn't walk for the first two weeks. Walk down and up the stairs for the first two weeks after the surgery. And so, it was health, it was community, and then it was somewhat like wealth, career, something in there, financial. I thought to myself that my career has defined me for so long. And I've always been a high performer, multi-hyphenate, very excited about achieving that I was losing my own identity. And so as I would write about my career, I was taking this next leap into my own brand as a love letter to myself, but a love letter to my career.

Keiyana Arnold: I'm sharing the things that I wish I would have known, not only about demystifying the hiring process, but also about wellness and how important it is. And so I like to incorporate some type of wellness engagement when I'm hosting my workshops or when I'm doing my consulting. I make sure to emphasize how important wellness and how important inclusion is when it comes to any process or brand. And so a professional love letter was my way of taking back the reins of my career and my story and doing it all on my own terms.

Mary Killelea: I love that. Well, it's fun to follow you. I will include a link to your site in the show notes. I also wanted to touch on Fi. Tell everyone because I think it's relatively new. Maybe I'm wrong but I think it's a relatively new app. Tell everyone what it is, how they can access it and what you do on it.

Keiyana Arnold: Yes. Okay. So, Professional Love Letter is my own personal brand. I do one-on-one coaching, group coaching, corporate training, consulting and content creation, and brand partnerships. Fi is one of those brand partnerships and Fi is so exciting. They are actually a new networking app. I like to call it LinkedIn's new cousin. It is definitely a space where it's more about building connections. People on this app actually want to be networking with each other. So I think of it as a much more well structured Discord channel as well. My personal channel is called Ask a Recruiter Anything. We started with zero members in November, which is when Fi actually launched their app, but in November, we had zero members and as of today, we just hit over 7,000. We're about to head into April. And so, I'm very proud of the growth. But the channel name is Ask a Recruiter Anything. It's myself. I manage it, but we also have several other recruiters who are part of my channel and they dive in and chime in with their advice, too. But our channel members every day type in questions, questions about the job search, how to navigate pivots, how to stand out. They even send their resumes into this channel. And I have days during the month where I host a live chat. And so outside of the sporadic times that I'm responding to questions and that the other recruiters are responding to questions, I also hold live host live video chats. And during the live video chats, if you post a question, I respond with a one to two minute video. And it's been so cool to see the impact. We've had folks who have gotten a video resume review one minute video. They come back and they're like, "Here's my updated resume." and it looks completely different. And this same person actually came back and was like, "Oh, I'm going to this networking event. , what should I do?" D came back from the networking event, typed into the group, and was like, "I got an interview." So, it's just been really cool to see how folks who really lean in and leverage this channel, they can get the real tea behind the scenes on how to navigate the job search process and they're seeing results. And so that's why I'm so excited about the partnership and just to see where this app goes for sure and it's free. It's invite only. You do need to have some sort of invite link. You can find that in my site on any of my social channels. But my invite code is key. So key123 and that will get you a fight invitation and an invitation to my channel specifically.

Mary Killelea: Oh, that is awesome. It really is something fun because it's happening so quickly and I like Fi because you can kind of be more yourself. Your personality can kind of come across a little bit more then like LinkedIn you somewhat kind of keep it more professional.

Keiyana Arnold: Yeah,

Mary Killelea: I don't know if you've noticed that as well.

Keiyana Arnold: I've noticed that Jenzie is coming in hot. I love Jenz energy. Honestly, I'm a millennial myself, but I like to say I have my Gen Z alter ego that pops out sometimes. And it's just like they are shaking the table and I love it. I see people now creating content on LinkedIn where they're doing their makeup. Get ready with me while I talk about how to network.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, I think LinkedIn now that they're so focused and welcoming a video and everyone's saying like that's the place to be, I think you're going to see the landscape change there.

Keiyana Arnold: Yes, I definitely see that. I actually had a LinkedIn partnership this past year and they are absolutely trending more towards video. Video is going to be the new wave and movement of LinkedIn. And so similarly to how we saw MySpace and Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and all of these platforms evolve, I like to tell people social media is not going away. It's growing. Same same as AI. And so you want to be an early adopter to these trends because there's going to be a natural learning curve in anything that we do. And so getting comfortable in that learning curve and really like leaning into it is the best way to learn it. and you're going to be thriving while other people are still trying to figure out how to use this thing after resisting it for 10 years.

Mary Killelea: Right. Right. I know that was me. I'm not going to lie. I was a little nervous and and gunshy about doing video and then I've done video and it's like one of my favorite things to do

Keiyana Arnold: And it's never too late to learn. It really is at any stage in your life. My grandmother is on these profiles. She is in her 70s and she's not able to drive, but she's on social media.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome.

Keiyana Arnold: I'm like, "Yes, grandma."

Mary Killelea: That's fantastic. How are you attracting brand deals? Are you going to them, they coming to you, or how's that work?

Keiyana Arnold: I have been fortunate enough to get a lot of inbound traffic into my DMs. A lot of time it's like me posting something depending on the topic that I'm posting about. Those are typically the type of partners that I attract. Recently, I have been doing a little bit more outbound outreach and I'm specific and I'm particular and I'm strategic about who I'm reaching out to because it has to be alignment. I think there are a lot of folks who are like, "Oh, well, I love Sephora, so I'm just going to DM Sephora and ask for a partnership." But same as the business in corporations, how they have business goals they have values and I think you have to meet them where they are and make it make sense. Yeah. Really being able to prove your concept whether that's having the analytics to show for but more so having a story to tell around that partnership and why it would make sense and why it would be important. Maybe even like sharing a video that you made or a post that you made for them without any type of compensation. Those are also ways to get some type of example or add to your portfolio. But my strategy right now is aligning to brands and opportunities that are naturally organic in my everyday living and something that I can speak passionately about and that I have a story that I can tell.

Mary Killelea: Do you have a newsletter?

Keiyana Arnold: , I do have an email list and so every now and again I do send out newsletter updates. I say the best way to find me is on social media, Instagram, professional loveletter. You can also email me. My email is a professional lovelet letter. You're gonna get a lot of emails. I'm just saying. Yes, I know it is. It is. We'll work on that later, but right now it's working. Like we're going to stick to this brand right now. And then you can also find me on my website professional loveletter.bio. I'm using the Beacons website which is amazing. It's like a one-stop shop storefront. It's embedded into your social media platform.

Mary Killelea: Very cool. All right, one question before you leave us today. What does to be bolder mean to you?

Keiyana Arnold: To be bolder. Let's talk about boldness. I think it takes someone in this generation in 2025, this economy to do anything. You need to be bold. You need to go within. You need to do something that's against the grain. You need to blaze the trails that you want to be seen in, that you want to represent, that you want to go for. Boldness is what's going to carry you through right now in this season. And so me being here on this podcast sharing the things that I've shared, I'm hoping that I can pay these messages and stories forward to inspire people to be bolder.

Mary Killelea: Fantastic. Hey, thank you so much for answering my DM and coming on to the show and sharing your journey with everyone. Of course.

Keiyana Arnold: Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to staying in touch. Maybe we can do part two sometime. Who knows? But it has been a joy.

Keiyana Arnold: Thank you, Mary. I appreciate you.

Mary Killelea: Thank you.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bBolder.com. That's the number 2 little bBolder.com.