the power of the dm w/ conner bush

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at T D S and T D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. So Connor, first and foremost, give the people what they want. Who are you and what do you do at a super high level? We'll go from there. Sure. First of all, I can't.

You just compared render atles after party to Coachella. That's going to be your day. He's really punchy. He's playing. I don't even know who that is, but it's a rapper. And he's going to play. It's going to be awesome. Who'd you say? Gucci Mane. Dude, you don't know who Gucci Mane. I saw Gucci Mane in 2010. I don't know who that is, but he's going to be there, though. I know that much. Cool. So yeah, anyway, so I'm Connor. I've been a software engineer for like, since 2013, so going on going on eight plus years now. I've been local to Nashville since 2014, came out here and been in the Nashville market for basically since until the pandemic.

and then you know started seeing market moving in all different kinds of ways and Decided to take a chance made a move to Evernote and then shortly after that made a move to Netflix And so here I am still sitting in Nashville working remote for a you know for the Valley Company So I love it. I love to see it. Love to see as they say David. It's great to see you I've been it's great to see you as well and Dominic It's great. So we got full house this morning Connor people people want to know about the DM man So so let's so let's first off talk about Let's talk about your your journey to from a local company to Evernote, right?

I still consider Evernote big tech What was that process like for you? And because I know you and I messaged a little bit. So how did you end up in Evernote? Yeah, so and Shout out to you because here's well, I'll start out with what I was seeing happening There was just some basically some stuff going down and I was like, you know, I feel like, I feel like it might be time for me to make a move. And I saw that there were all these like companies that I kind of always wanted to work for, you know, like Valley Tech companies, but I didn't want to live in the Valley to work there.

So, you know, I just, you know, kept my, you know, sites unnatural. And then, but with all the remote stuff opening up, and I already been working remote with the pandemic and whatnot. So I thought, you know, I could do this. I think they wouldn't give it a shot. So I went through and I just started picking out companies. And I said, okay, these are the ones that I wanted to, I wanted to spearfish my way into that world. So I started out, my DM game at that point was, I am looking for a job. So there's two different kind of ways to go about it.

And I think the latter is better, but right now, It's like, okay, I'm actually, you know, I'm open to going somewhere. So I was doing the DM thing. I picked out the companies. I mean, I have spreadsheets going of like, what have I done? Because I got started to lose track. And I was, I didn't, I put in very little applications. Like some places I would, if it was really easy to fill out, I would. But if it wasn't, I focused mostly on LinkedIn and just like was looking at engineers, engineering, engineers. So you weren't applying that. Well, first off, you said something I want to highlight, companies make it easy to apply.

You miss out on talent like Connor, if you have all these clicks, right? So I want to highlight that. But so you didn't really submit your resume anywhere. Mm-hmm. No, I didn't even submit my resume to Evernote. I had to after my offer, because they needed something for HR. And so you're Evernote job and your Netflix job, you both got without submitting application? Yes, I know I never submitted one in Netflix to this day. So crazy. Yeah. So so you had spreadsheets with smart by you having all these spreadsheets. You need to have all that to be organized. So probably you. Oh, there's a little.

You come up with your favorite companies, right? Cause a lot of people like, well, like, I don't know, like, I like, like, was it products that you've used? Like what? How did you create that list? Dude, I went, I nerd it out on this. Okay. So I have a spreadsheet where I have, actually let me just see what it looks like. Okay, so I have categories. And the categories are, I love this. The categories are prestige, pay, purpose, and then people slash culture. Prestige, pay. Purpose, and I wanted it, the four, I was like, okay, I want the four people. Four people. The prestige, pay, purpose, and people.

And people is like the culture, right? Sure. So, and what I did was I put a weighted average for each of those. And so out of 100%, you know, I said, well, prestige matters made me like maybe 10%. Sure. Pay matters, maybe 30%. Purpose matters, maybe 35%. And then you got like 25% left and that goes into people. Right. So you can, and you can, whatever you feel like, you know, that's what I did. And then I put, I put the companies on the left and then put the prestige pay purpose people on the top and then just went down and gave it a score from one to 100.

Okay. Then I averaged it out and I came up with a ranking and I was like, okay, so these tops, so that helped me understand what do I value and what companies do I want to, and always I don't know the answer to all those things, but I just had to go off like things that I knew. Like I knew Netflix had a great culture. So they were up there with culture. I knew they had good pay. So like, I did those sorts of things. And so it was pretty easy at that point to narrow down the list of like 10 to 12, something you couldn't, you know, it was hard to focus on a ton of them.

So, you know, basically like Fang plus style companies. And then that first list and Evernote made it in the end of that list at that point. Right. And they were, and it's interesting how that all ended up shaking out because I didn't even, I wasn't even going to go in for the interview because I had a counter offer at my current place at Nashville. And so I, but they said they could get me in really quick. So I just, I went on, I had like, like our daughter had a rough night or something. I had like three hours of sleep. And you know, this is one of those things where I was like, okay, let's do this thing.

I had a four hour interview, you know, in like less than 12 hours or whatever. So, um, so I went through the, and I ended up getting an offer from Evernote. And then so I had the two offers on the table, which was Evernote, and then my counter offer at my current place. Because I was open with me. I would also recommend being open with your current employer about where you stand. That made the process so much easier. I didn't hide anything. I told him how I was feeling through the whole thing. And we- Wait, you told your current employer that you were actively looking?

I got asked. Gotcha. So I didn't, we had a pretty, because we were having some attrition issues. And so I basically, they basically told me like, hey, you planning on staying? because I need to know because I want to, you know, we can make some moves for you to position you better to, you know, make your career goals. I'm like, okay, well, full disclosure. It's a very safe. Yeah, I have some offers on the table. You know, stuff rolling in, I guess. So I was like, give me some time to think this over. And I was like, you know, basically, so they came up with the counter-offer.

offer and they were very similar. And I remember I called, I called three people. I called buddy my close friend that I did work with. It was an engineer, a close, a close friend, because he was already at the company, a close friend that I used to work with. And then you. And so I was like, okay, so when I used to work with an engineer, so I wanted to do work with this engineer and a recruiter who I trust. So I talked to those three people. And you told me you were like, dude, if you want to getting big tech you need to go.

And one person told me you need to stay. And the other one was like, I don't know. So you literally got three different answers. Yeah, I did. I was like, well, I guess neither one's a really bad decision. And it wouldn't have been. But the Evernote was the right decision for where I wanted to go. So I took it. And when I, I do want to go back real quick, right? and kind of going off Justin's thing. What was your, cause you started to go into two types of DMs and then we got distracted. What two types of DMs were you sending at the time?

Okay. So at that time, it was mostly like, hey, I see you have an, like if I would find an engineering manager, I would do some digging. And so, yeah, I would do something and try to match the engineering manager who I felt like was with a position. And so I would be like, Hey, I see you have an open, especially if they advertise on LinkedIn. I'd say, you know, hey, I see you have an open position. I'd love to hear more about it. I didn't get a whole lot of answers for that. I mean, I mean, it was very important. So messaging, and again, I know I'm repeating this a lot.

I just want to drive it home with the viewers today and then in the future. So your original approach was, hey, Mr. Manager. So you would do digging to see who the engineer managers are at the company. you would say, hey, I see a job posting open. We'd love to chat with you. And you said that wasn't getting anywhere. No, it wasn't. I mean, I got a few chats, a few bites, I guess, but not a whole lot. And recruiters were more apt to respond to that because that's their job to hire people, but engineering managers, no. And even engineers, you wouldn't get a whole lot.

I guess I was kind of fine-tuning my DM game at that point. Yeah. Also, another thing that I would do is, I would watch their activity. I learned that, like, cause LinkedIn shows your activity, they shows it right there on the search. Like you can, you can see real quick how active someone is. If they don't have anything in the past 90 days, there's no point. Like I'm not, I'm not. I'm not even honest. I've never thought of that. I've never thought of that. That's hard. I wasn't even bothered to message them because I was like, they're never gonna see it. So, because they probably only use LinkedIn when they're looking for a job.

Sure. Sure. So I only messaged people who were active. And that when I made that switch, that started to help a little bit too. I noticed some uptick. So fast forward a little bit, I'm not ever know. And I'm trying to learn. Okay, okay. What did you change your DMs too? Well, that's what I'm saying. Okay, so that's where I'm going. Okay, so I'm not ever knowin' a little bit. And I started to, it wasn't even at this point. I knew that I wanted to make a move somewhere else eventually. Like I didn't think ever know it was like my end game. because I kind of...

You probably were thinking about being there what a year or two probably? Yeah, and I thought okay, you know, I'll put in some value here, learn a lot about what it's like for scale, and then I might, you know, try again because I did have some interviews at some bigger companies, but I didn't pass, which was a... That's a whole other story that we can talk about, the interview process at Big Ten. If there's some time, we can definitely dive into it. sure. So what I did was I was like, I want to do good at what I'm at right now. And it was an area that I had never really been in before.

Because I'd always done this like real enterprise level text and I hadn't really dealt with a big huge user basis. And everyone knows like 207 million users. It's like, oh my gosh, okay, big user base here. So I started deeming people who are in the same section that's, who did the same kind of stuff at other companies. I found I started looking for what, what I like, so usually searching what I did at other companies. So I would type in like, let's say I, let's say I worked in customer service. I would type in like customer service, space, Netflix, boom, enter. And I would find a bunch of people who did that, right?

Or whatever it is, maybe, you know, maybe you've worked in, I don't know, hospital, whatever the thing is, right? And I would search that and then engineering, right? And add that in there. So I would find all the engineering managers and engineers that worked in that field because I wanted to learn more about what they did. And I was like, because I wanted to be good at it. And I thought maybe this was to be a path for me. So I found a few people I ended up talking to, like, I remember talking to an engineer at Instacard, some other place, and then Netflix was one of them.

And I remember the message. I basically, actually, I think, yeah, I basically said, like, let's pretend the manager's name is Susan, right? Sure. Christ, Susan, I see your growth engineering manager at Instacart. That's awesome. If If you have a free eight minutes, I'd love a chance to chat with you about, I'd love a chance to chat with you and learn more about your team. Right? That was it. Very simple, short and sweet, like two sentences longer. Well, you did kind of what I say to do, right? It's a specific amount of time. You said eight minutes. Yep. And I don't know. I think that resonates with a ton of people.

Like if somebody likes to do like half semits every time, of course I say this and I mess I'm like Sam so don't no one messes me right now. I can't talk to you. I love you. I can't talk to you right now But if people mention me like seven minutes eight minutes, I'm more willing to chat with them than if somebody says you got time to talk Yeah, I think it's important. So so you were messaging people and were you saying hey? I work on a like a growth team as well. Oh, that's right. Yes. Yes. So that's what I and that's what I said.

That's like I that's what I That's I work in that at at at Evernote So I added that piece into so it's like so you form so that's the connection piece right so right specific time Find a connection Flattery like hey, I see you doing this. That's awesome And then just short sweet to the point That that particular message He would must have been already on LinkedIn because he DM me right back within a minute and was like hey you want chat Monday? I was like, yeah, and I made sure to respond with that. Cause I remember being like, whoa. Okay. Cool. That sounds like the higher metric Netflix got back to you pretty quickly.

Yep. Um, now that was, I had also, I had DM'd 15 other just that Netflix. And I got back to two, two got back to me. One was on paternity leave. And so we didn't, we didn't get a chance to talk and then the, and then, and then one. So it's still, And here's the deal Connor did the DMs the way I preach it admiration flattery specific questions specifically amount of time Right Connor went through those steps. He only his response frame was only two out of fifteen like You kind of have to go through the volume with it a little bit Mm-hmm Yeah, you really do.

I mean I I remember putting in I remember putting in a lot of time doing that and and I It's funny That first comment. Oh also one thing I when I did when I did respond to that I made sure to respond with him with an with a link to the to meet Because I didn't want to I didn't want to cause like I didn't want any flush you just calmly to book it Well, no because I didn't want them to have to book it I just because he he suggested a time So I went ahead and just sent a link for that time like a Google meet and just a the people's got to click this one already.

But now if if we hadn't set a time and I did have a busy schedule, I could have been like, Hey, if you want, you know, I just felt like, I'd rather them send me a calendar link or something. So I could like, that's a clear calendar, you know, So I do want to get to a few questions, a few questions to come in. So Justin comes in. So in the DM game, how do you ask questions that give you a good representation of their culture? So this is when you were talking about the four P's, which by the way, what were the four P's one more time people?

Pay, prestige, people and purpose. Love that. I want to reiterate that again. So did you, did you try to get a representation of the culture in the DM or did you try to to wait for that for the phone call. Yeah, I waited. I didn't do any. Yeah. And honestly, what I would do before a phone call, I stalked this guy. And I was talking about it. I told him, I was like, dude, I've watched everything you've put out. Like anything that is out there on the internet that has your name on it, I've read it. That means a lot to that person. It means a lot of people DM me to that.

Yeah. So great, great on you. You got a lot of content out there. That'd be a little weird. I see everything Taylor Desens put out. You'll be here for a minute. Dominic, question for Connor. When DMing potential players, did you straight ask employers about the open? Okay, so we already talked about this. So Dominic, so Connor, again, so I guess Connor recapped. So originally you were asking about the positions, but then you changed it. Yeah, and I noticed, I noticed I wasn't getting very good responses like that. So my thing is like, you want to be honest. Like don't go into something, even if you like, because you may be in a place where you are looking for a job.

But I would say your DM doesn't have to be like, like you can still want to learn about a company. Sure. You just need to go into it with the right mindset, right? Like you need to go into a conversation knowing nothing may ever come out of this. I mean, I may not even talk to them about a job, which is like my situation with the Netflix, our first conversation, we didn't even talk about a job. Not at all. We just talked about the stuff. It was later that I found on his teams page that they were looking for an engineer. Yeah, so I want to, so one more question here.

Elliott, great to see you, Honorog, Cody, it's great to see you as well. Let me get to James' question, And let's kind of, because we're already kind of two thirds of the way through this conversation. So I definitely want to get to the Netflix portion. What do you think the response would have been if you had done the same DM style while not in big tech? I think it would have worked the same. Yeah, I think you got to get bit. Honestly, I think this, I think you get better response rates, honestly. Because, because I mean, once you get into it, like once you have a certain company attached to your name, you do get more talk talk about what your DMs look like now.

They're I get I get a few. How many DMs do you want to say you get a day two to three day? Something like that. Crazy. And I feel and they're not sometimes are and I feel like I do feel bad like like you said you know like you don't have time to respond to it does get to that point where it's like I want to talk to people and I feel bad because I get you know I get a lot and not just But like you just request that come through every day. It's just like I don't have, I wish I had time. I wish I had more time to commit to talking to people, but I just don't.

Yeah, yeah. I totally get it. Yeah, I would agree with Connor. Well, James's question, I think if you do the same style, even outside of Big Tech, I think you'll probably have a better response because their DMs are useful. So, Connor, I wanna dive in, so diving through the Netflix a little bit more. So, you know, Evernote, DM, Link, you know, then you were DMing people on Netflix and then you had the conversation. How long was the initial conversation? We talked for 30 minutes. It was supposed to be eight. You said eight minutes in the DM. Yeah, yeah. Which is great. It's typically how it works.

Yeah. After you ended, well, how did you end the conversation? Because I feel like people struggle with this. How did I? I just I want to I said, you know, hey, thank you so much for your time. This has been you know, this has been great for me I just wanted to reiterate how much I appreciated their time taking time out of their day For to talk with me about something that is just that I'm you know trying to get that I have a passion to learn more about and You know to be able to just pick their brain about stuff and I just want to make sure that that was known So there was a there is a question here So how would the conversations go on Google me?

I feel like a little intimidated not knowing what to ask or say. So did you have questions that you wanted to ask? At least you need to be prepared to go into that. That's it. You need to pretend like you're an interview, like you're about to sit on 60 minutes and you're the interviewer and they're in the hot seat. Like you need to be ready for questions. Treat it like a conversation, but you need to have questions ready. How many questions, like two or three? Oh, bro, I had like 10. Oh, did you really? Oh, yeah. And not just questions, but topics. Like, for example, they put out some kind of content, you know, they did something on their team like, hey, how did your team do that?

Like, I wanted to open into stuff because I wanted it to carry, right? I wanted to hear something and then pick on that one thing and be like, oh, okay. Well, let me learn more about that, right? Like you have to be a good listener. Don't sit and wait for your turn to speak because people can feel that. And I think you need to, it's really about being a good listener and being curious and wanting to learn more. Yeah, but come up with questions for sure. Absolutely, I love that. So all right, so you ended the call. You didn't ask for anything props to you.

You just said, hey, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. And so then what was the process after that? I was, I was finishing up my stalking and I saw at the bottom of a page of that they, that they had for the team and it said that they were hiring. And I was like, oh man, I just got here at Evernote. I'd only been there seven months. I was like, I don't want to leave here, but I have an end. Like he's, he's right. He's right there. And I was like, it can't hurt to just DM him. It can't hurt to DM him one more time and just ask about it.

So how long after the conversation? It was not that night. I waited till the next day. I had it in my head what I would say. I was like, okay, so I queued on it. I was like, I'll sleep on it. Yeah. And I woke up the next morning and go, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this. So I walked in and I just said, hey, thank you again so much for your time. I was browsing this site and I saw you had an open position, I'd love to hear more about it. And he was like, sure, let's talk again. And then the two months long interview process, which is crazy.

How many rounds did you tell me, like 15 or something? Yeah, dude, I did. Well, because I ended up, I didn't even end up on his team. Are you serious? I got, I came down between, I got to the last round to the final stage and it ended up being me and another person. He chose the other person but really liked me and felt like I would be a good fit for the culture and be good at Netflix. Their sister team was hiring and I had to do some interviewing with them and then I got an offer from them. That's crazy. Yeah, it's wild. So let's talk a little bit about as you wrap up your last five minutes or so.

You mentioned imposter syndrome. I would say, so I never dealt with imposter syndrome my career until the last two years. And I will now looking back on it. If you're not dealing with imposter syndrome, I don't think you're growing fast enough. That's it. And because I've really pushed myself over the last two years to kind of do some new things, Connor, talk about the imposter syndrome that you deal with. I was the same way. I've always been a pretty confident person. You kind of, you know, parents have always been like, Hey, you can do whatever you want, you know, you can put your mind to it.

You can do it. So I've always had a good, I feel like a good confidence over confidence sometimes. I overestimate myself. That is why I'm wearing cheetah print. So, so I was like, so I never really had to deal with that. And then, but then getting here, I've got it like there's a new tech stack that I'm working with. I've never really done some of that stuff before. By the way, that as an engineer, like that can be an intimidating thing. Like don't just because it said you haven't done the tech on the, on the resume or on the job posting, who cares? Apply anyway.

Like if you feel confident that you can learn it, then apply. Like if you have this and it's trans, you know it's trans. Because tell the people your background from a tech stack and then what you're doing now, just people. No, that's what I've always been in the Microsoft world, always done full stack.net development. I've done front end like with React and Angular and stuff like that too. But so this position is going to is react with Java. I touch Java like three months in 2013. Like I, you know, I took a class in college. Like I don't know Java. But I knew that it was similar enough to C-sharp.

I knew it was an object-oriented language. I knew I knew I could learn it and so I just went into it, you know So I you know I and also I did practice it because I knew I wanted to show in the interview when I would do the coding challenges That I could do Java so I did they told me I could do whatever language I wanted But I picked Java because I'd been practicing it. That's awesome. So so that I had some so I I mean I'm still going through the imposter syndrome thing right now of like like there's stuff like, you know, to nerd out a little, you know, like there may be some like ORM that I just like they're using it high.

It's called hibernate for Java. And it's like, I don't know that or their dependency injection framework. I don't know that. I don't know how that works. I don't know how like the the the I don't know what I don't know how great old works and I don't know those things. So those are the building blocks of the of the language and the frameworks that I just clueless about. And I have to ask questions that I would have been that I would have asked five years ago in C sharp and it makes me feel done and But I But as long as you go I think as long as you go into those things like let it humble you and let that be like come to peace with that and then and ask the question because it's better to ask than to Not and then look like a fool afterward.

So so I've been learning that that's been so yes, that's plus one to the like pushing you think that this is this has pushed me more than more than I had in a long time so that's awesome that's awesome so Elliot comes in so we'll end with this question I really appreciate the suggestion you gave to connect with everyone on your core team in week one what's something that after two to three months that is healthy succeed beyond week one oh that's a good question yeah so I think Elliot and I talked about that a little bit it was where I where what I would do is I made sure to schedule one on ones with everybody because I'm in summer mode.

It's so good. Because you can feel like you're on an island real quick. So I took and I told my manager I want to do this like it's I wanted to focus more on meeting people and connecting with people than I did getting into the code my first you know three weeks because I felt like it was more important for me to get a context of what it is that I'm doing and who the the players are that I'll be working with. And that will give me a little more energy when it does get to the code piece. Because if I dove straight into that, I would just feel so disconnected.

And not know who to ask questions, not know who to talk to. But because I did the people thing first, when I had questions about code stuff, I knew who to go to to ask. Like I'd see something come up, boom, that's Sally over in the product support team product support team or whatever. I made it a point to meet with those people. And then your rapport was already there, so it wasn't awkward. Yes, exactly. Like there's so much value in meeting not just your team, but the, you know, the ancillary teams that you will be working with, the cross-functional stuff, like it's so important to meet with those people and get to know them.

Because in an office setting, you just walk by those people and you meet them. But if you're remote, every conversation has to be intentional. And I think that's important. That's it. Every conversation. And I'll tell you this, too. So Jake Dom on Twitter, he's in Raleigh. He tweeted yesterday, he goes, hey, I'm speaking. What's like one piece of advice you give your early self? And I said that. I said network with everybody in your organization. I would have not gotten to where I'm at in my career, Vaco, if I had not taken the time to network. And I will give props to my first boss.

My first boss encouraged me. She's like, you need to meet these four division heads. And I will say this, that probably saved my career early on, I'll just say that. So, and then Elliot comes in, oh no, he's just adding two to three months, giving him a minimum, I love it. Cool. All right, Connor, to wrap up here, last minute or two, final suggestions for the people, either hiring managers. I know we touched briefly on the submittal process. I don't know if you want to end with that or something about the job seeker, but. Sure, that's the only truth. I would say, as someone looking for a job, be yourself, but be intentional about being yourself.

Don't just go into conversations thinking you've got it because you might not. Think it through, play it out in your head, plan it. If you're not a planner, like I'm not. I've become, this has made me more of a planner than ever. And also I work at Evernote for a little bit. So I use the app, it's pretty good. So, you know, but be prepared for things that you're going into because being unprepared just sets you up for failure. And I've learned that the hard way for sure. So definitely, definitely be prepared for whatever you're going into and be humble, be yourself. and be you.

I love that. I love that. Well, y'all, thank you for hanging out. Connor, stay on as we wrap up. I want to say bye to you. But y'all, thanks for hanging out this morning. We appreciate it. Hopefully you learned something from Connor and go connect with Connor. He's a wealth of knowledge. And so tomorrow, no guidance counselor 2.0. My entire team is flying in today. So I'm going to be in the office this afternoon and all day tomorrow. So no guidance counselor tomorrow, Thursday, we got unicorn finders. It's just me and the two guys. Chit chatted on market stuff. So go connect with us there.

And then Friday, we'll be back with another episode of Guiding's Council 2.0. So Connor, thank you so much for joining me. And I appreciate it. Thank you, man. And y'all have a wonderful Tuesday. Take it easy. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. Because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it.

So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. Destin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.