job search tips (solo)

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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 vacovac.com is how to get and touch me old fashioned email social media at tdsintdessey. And then 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 let's go and dive in. First off, I want to kind of catch all up on some things that I was seeing, especially at the code conference. So the one thing I want to talk about first is stop putting pressure on yourself that to find your dream job.

So I've started to really actually if you essentially have maybe seen me early on, like basically like I want to help you find your dream job. And I've started to really evaluate like what's your dream job. What is a dream job? Is there such things a dream job? And and and and for me specifically, I think there actually is not a dream job. I think there is a dream job for the season of life you are into the reason why I'm bringing that up is because I want to tell people who are watching these platforms today to to to to basically leverage. And basically consider the fact that hey, listen, I'm looking for a job right now that fits this season of life that I am in.

Right. I've become fascinating. We're talking in the visuals of like. So a lot of people on my team and fun. Well, in fact, I'm going to start having my team on this show so you can learn more about them. Um, but I've started to talk, you know, my team is getting older. Right. Like we're getting older, right? I just had a guy on my team who had a second second kid, right? I have another guy on my team going through his first kid, right? He's like four months in of being a new dad, right? And so I've become fascinated with where people out in there are in their lives as it opposes their turn to their career.

And the one thing I want to tell you all is that don't put so much pressure on yourself finding your dream job. Um, I would focus on finding the dream job that is right for the season of life you are him. Right. Listen, there are some seasons of life where you can go really, really hard as a paint, work 12 hour days. And that's great. And I think that's awesome. Right. And I do that, right? I went through a season of life with that. I still kind of am, but not as bad. Everyone COVID hit from March of 2022 to 2022. Um, I pretty much focused on my time at work and I worked a ton, right?

And so that being said, that's that was that time now, the time of life I'm in right now is I have to be a little bit more hands on as a dad. I have to be more available. Um, and so I, I pulled back the reins a little bit, right? I tried to be more, more family first. I can always do better job there, but that's my goal. And so I would tell you all this, I think a lot of jobs, you just put pressure on themselves to find the job they're going to be at the next 10 years. And I just, I just don't think that's a thing.

I just don't think that's thing. Let, let me know y'all's thoughts. Take talk. I see a bunch of y'all watching Morgan on LinkedIn goes, I agree. I think dream jobs change just as much as we grow and develop seasons change. And so do aspirations, absolutely. Um, so the next thing I want to talk about too, and this is coming from the conference side of things is just the fact of putting yourself out there. Right. I, I truly think the way you differentiate yourself in the market is to comment too, like engaged. So for example, right? So Randall, um, like I've never find your four now, uh, nap job, not your forever dream job.

Now job, you know, I, I haven't met Randall in person person, right? And so for me, like, but I feel like I know Randall, because Randall always comments on my shirts. I always comments on this live show, right? I, I, I, I met a speaker, the, I met a speaker in person. His name's Todd Todd Libby. I follow him on Twitter. Todd is really big on the accessibility side of things in tech. He also lives in Maine and loves lobster rolls, right? And I, I, I was giving my presentation at Code on the beach and I talked about this. I said, I've never met Todd in my life.

I've never met Todd in my life. But I feel like I know Todd, because he engages with me and he puts out the same consistent content time and time again. And so again, put yourself out there, right? Comment engaged. I think that's a good starting point, right? Once I have the time, I'm going to come out with like, not a book. So I don't have time to write a book, but I'm going to come out with like a PDF of like your first 30 days, right? Or your first 90 days, like, okay, you were laid off. What do I do within the first 30 days and all the things that I need to do?

And, and, and, and the big thing that I will tell you, the big thing I will tell you is you need to start commenting and engaging on LinkedIn, right? Getting your name out there, name, brand recognition, right? There's so much that comes into play of the job, there's with dating and marketing. I talk about both. And so they're getting constantly trying to put yourself out there as huge. Branding comes in 110% of grief. 10 years ago, I definitely would have been in the wrong season for my current role. See, possibly even five. Thinking about going back to some of my previous roles now, yeah, no, it's a very wrong season for that now.

Again, but the reason I'm telling people that I'm so passionate about right now, so many so many people find, have so much pressure on themselves to find the job for the next 10 years. And I just don't think that that's, I don't think it's the thing. I focus on developing the skills and I love the dream jobs that came to me. I love this so much that Ash and comes in and talks about this because I will tell you some unicorn finders, my other podcast. We interviewed David Kiss. David Kiss is at Mux, which is a video I didn't solve for a company. And or a video company, video focused company.

And Dave has always been passionate about video work, right? Creatives. And he, what he did is he, he, he mastered that side. And every opportunity has come to him whether it's a freelance gig or it's a full time, nine to five gig, it's been in his area of expertise. If you focus and talk about in documents, if you document all that, you find your tribe, right? I talk about finding your tribe a lot, right? When you comment and you network, right? Everybody who comments on this show this morning, based off how you engage with me, I would love to hang out with you all. I truly, truly would.

I would love to hang out with you all in person because I can just tell the vibe is great. Again, you attract your tribe with the content you put out. You move comes in is very great here that from you, someone who started, they're going to accrue changers. Yeah, listen, career changers. I mean, I'm a career changer, right? I didn't use it, right? And then I went into recruiting. You know, I'm very thankful that I fell into recruiting, but there was a level of networking that I had to do as a musician, right? When I was in musician or actually the lack of, all right, story time real quick, story time real quick.

When I was in musician, I moved to Nashville. I didn't know how to network, right? I, so this summer, this, my senior in college, me and my lead singer would drive up to Nashville once a month. We would drive up to Nashville once a month. My lead singer would song right and I would just sit in a hotel room. I would just sit in a hotel and go to a coffee shop waste time. When I moved up here to Nashville and try to do music, I served tables and I never networked. What I should have been doing, what I should have been doing, is I should have spent all my time at music venues.

I should have spent my time down at the honky talks and networked. I should have gone to all those things, right? To network, to, to just be there, right? One of the things I've been fascinated about, and I'm going to probably put out more content around this the next few weeks is music, is like music culture, musician culture, and tech culture, right? I should have, when I moved up to Nashville, I should have just planted my butt down on Broadway and just met all the amazing musicians. Just sat there, bit of support. If there was a favorite band, I would try to go there every time.

Be in front of them, because you'll slowly start to build friendships. It's the exact same thing with code conferences, right? Go to the code conference every year in the city, you're in. Go to the same meetup every time. Sometimes not even talking to people, but just being present is networking enough. It is networking enough. Let me say that again. Sometimes just being present and being consistent is networking enough just as much as maybe talking to somebody. So Barrett comes back, yeah, he only gets three. Yeah, you're lucky if you get a job for three years. That PDF is a book since you get it published.

Appreciate it. So many applications. So Barrett, Randall comes in. So my application to LinkedIn beats me down mentally. I think people don't understand LinkedIn is the last place to get a job posted. It's also where most people will apply. Yeah, again, you really need, you really, really need to go where the attention isn't, right? So actually, I heard this tip, I think it was TikTok. I heard this tip where I would DM influencers or people you want to work with on the platform that they're not really focused on. So for example, I don't know if Ed, we are in TikTok and no, Nome Nodolo. I think that's how you pronounce her name.

Nome, if you're watching this, I do apologize for a bunch of that. She's a fantastic creator down Atlanta. She's freaking hilarious. She's a developer. And I brought her onto my show. Well, at the time, she had like 100 or 200,000 followers on TikTok. Now she's got like 800,000 followers on TikTok. I messaged her on Twitter. She only had 300 followers. Right? So what I would do, and I've used that strategy consistently. But basically, I would always go to the platform that maybe they don't have all their followers or all the attention because you probably get more responses. Melissa, thank you so much. Let's see here.

Yubu comes in former therapist of recovery musician. I love story time, Taylor Tales, like Duck Tales, Taylor Tales. This is me networking in the comments. Again, it's that simple. It's sometimes I listen to music. Let's go to, I love wearing the same kind of shirts as you ask my wife. You actually have it's cool to wear those kind of shirts. Office, I come from the Power World where it wouldn't be cool. They got, dude, wear the shirts, man. Wear the shirts. I have a gift card. It's not a gift card. I have a referral code on my solo.to. So go to solo.to.backslashtdecin. And I have a $20 off referral thing for doven.

Yeah, go with the traffic's minimal. I love that from Brandon. Also, no thing to. I'm not gonna talk about it right now. Blockchain and recruiting. I think it's a fascinating topic. I don't know enough about it, but I do think there's something there. So I'll get to that. And the final thing I want to close out on today is be fearless. Right? Be fearless. I think when it comes down to the job search, it's the people who put themselves out there and are okay with rejection are the ones that usually find the job faster. I have never had somebody tell me, man, I regret putting myself out there.

Right? I never talked to people who started a podcast or started posting content and ever said, I regret starting because it's always changed your life. It's always changed your life. So my advice to you today on this Monday is we wrap up here. That was it. I like my solo so so so so low show short. Say that 10 times I'm fast. Go be fearless today. Message that hiring manager at that company you've always wanted to work for. Right? Message message that recruiter who you've always wanted to message. Message that other senior developer at a company you've always looked up to. Right? Go be fearless today because I'm telling you, I'm telling you that people who have put themselves out there have never regretted it.

I've never had a DM that goes, wow, I really regret putting myself out there. Wow, I've really wasted my time. I've never had it. I've never had it. Um, last last few comments or up up here Steve, I've started leveraging my YouTube and Twitch to build connection with people. Absolutely to assist expanding my online presence. Thanks to encouragement from you and Christina. Oh, I love it. I love that so much. Yeah, listen, I think I think when it comes down to building community, you can know that we're Twitch. Um, if you have a video game, you can build community around there. I've thought about starting a wine club with tech people like wine and tech because I love wine and I want to network with people in tech.

Um, you know, college football NCAA football is coming out next year on game consoles. I'm a huge fan of that. I may have a community around NCAA football, right? My ice hockey community. I've built amazing, amazing connections from my ice hockey club, right? Again, you don't have to go out and start something completely random. Just start something in your passions and just start inviting people, start inviting people. Go be fearless. Sam comes in. I say, Sam and I just got connected by the way. Sam. It's great to see everybody. I recommend that people comment on social media posts on all platforms that your target company uses.

Companies often have a YouTube channel with zero comments. Yep. Absolutely. Again, engage with people liking and commenting on people's posts is networking in 2022. I'm beyond. So all that being said, thanks you all for hanging out with me today. I appreciate it. It's great to see you all. Hopefully you got something out of this. If you did get something out of this, I would love for you to share this episode on, on your LinkedIn or any of social media platforms. Tomorrow, I will be, I will be back with the AGO EC. Hopefully I pronounced the AGO's names, right? Maybe Síago. Maybe Síago. I'm going to have to get clarification on that.

But regardless, uh, the AGO is an ex hiring manager from Apple and American Express. He has some great thoughts around how to improve interviewing both on the Canada side and the higher school dive into that. Um, so hopefully you enjoyed the show today. I'll see you all tomorrow and uh, you all have a great Monday. Peace. Hey, you did it. You'll listen 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 finish 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 it, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, tailor at vaco.com or at t-dessing on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.