from code to coach

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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.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at t 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. Johnny, let's go ahead and get wrong big dog. So give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And where do you live? It's great to be here, man.

Thanks for having me. I'm Johnny. I live in Savannah, Georgia. Spent 24 of my 27 years of life on the West Coast. Seattle, Washington, born and raised. You'd up graduate, go Huskies, go dogs. What I do now is technical career coaching. So I work for companies, my main company is Pathrise, as you can see from my perfectly product place hoodie. I do freelancing on Upwork, huge freelance fan. I do work for Udacity as a technical criminal tour there. I've done a couple of other things, rather small coding boot camps that are up and coming. Yeah, I love it. I love it. All right, so Johnny, talk about your story, man, because so I want to set this up.

So Johnny, you wanted to be a developer, right? I did, I did. Okay, set the tone. Johnny wanted to be hands in the code. So talk, talk to the people about your job search journey that we talked online. Obviously, you know, a lot of interviews that failed. Just kind of just start from day one and in your story and we'll go from there. Okay. So graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in linguistics, got out of the Marine Corps at the same time and just wanted to dive straight into education. So I started teaching at a classical Christian school and private school, because I didn't have to do any more certification from there.

And that was awesome, but Portland's expensive and I would love to make money. And so I looked to pivot into tech. I'd had a lot of exposure to written and spoken language, but never computer languages. And so computational linguistics was a course that I didn't get to. And so I looked into full stack software development, software engineering, and kind of settled on the thinkful full stack bootcamp and just went through the whole process, went through admissions, went through the educational process, got to the job search and just fell on both my ass and my face at the same time. And it was a weird human pretzel of failure.

And it was just really rough, man. I've always been the type of person that I can fix anything that I know was wrong. But I didn't know what was wrong and I didn't know how to fix what was wrong. So it was just, it was crazy. And so that's what really got me into tech was failure in my own job search. And then what do you do from there? How can you ask for help? How does networking work? Is there even a purpose to networking? What can I get from that? And so that's kind of how this whole process got started. I love it. So all right, so you got out of college and then you said you went to bootcamp?

Went to coding bootcamp. Yes. Okay. Now was that free or paid? Paid. Okay. What made you choose that? My father has been in agile Scrum Master for Boeing for the last 30 years. And so he's like, I work with software engineers all the time with non-traditional backgrounds. I put the air quotes of non-traditional backgrounds in there because non-traditional background is not really the non-traditional background anymore nowadays. It's like, yeah, just try to learn how to code. Okay, how do you learn how to code? Well, there are institutions that are basically trade schools for coding. Yep. Sick, let's figure it out. And so you found that.

So, and what was your focus at the boot camp? Was it JavaScript? Was it just general? JavaScript. JavaScript. All right, and then how long were you there for? Or how long was that program? I just like my college degree, I managed to squeeze a six month program into about a year. Okay, I love it, I love it. So talk, talk about your process coming out of bootcamp, right? Cause I think, I think this is where the biggest disconnect happens among people is they're like, ah, I went to bootcamp. I'm going to be fine coming out of it. But talk about obviously your story coming out of it, and the interviews and the failing and the not knowing what, you know, what to improve on.

Yeah. So my whole life, just any job that I had worked part time, full time was you submit one or two resumes to one or two places. You have a couple of interviews, you have one or two offers. That's how things have always gone. And that was the assumption that I made going into the job search in tech. And six months in 3000 job application submitted three total interviews held at three separate companies, no, no second rounds, nothing. working with my career coach. Oh, did you really keep up with that number? Was it really 3,000 applications? 3,128. I would also tell you what's the definition of insanity.

That's the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. That's exactly what it was. But I paid for a program and they sold me on an experience. And I was looking to get that experience. I was looking to connect that vision from the start to the goal that I had in mind. And so I was following the advice of somebody that I, one I paid for, but two that I had some primary trust in. Yeah. And when you go to a veterinarian for heart surgery, a general career coach for technical career coach advice, it doesn't always work out the way that you intend.

And so you need very specific advice for a very specific problem. And that's what I was missing. And I didn't know that at the time. What changed? a man named Jason Humphrey changed my whole life. That's how it started. So he was a mentor at Thinkful, and Thinkful does their curriculum where you have individual checkpoints while you're going through the curriculum. And he was my interviewer, mock interviewer for fundamentals of web development. So just basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript. And I researched the hell out of this guy because I saw that he was my interviewer and I'm like, man, I need to know what he does, where he lives, where he sleeps.

That sort of, that sort of stuff coming from the military background. No, no, the enemy. And he had a whole bunch of web content already posted on how to succeed in coding interviews. And he was starting this company called coding career fast lane. I was like, Oh, cool. This is, this is awesome. This is what I, this is what I need. And so I impressed him in that interview using the same techniques that he had put online. And from that meeting, a network was then established. That was the first time that I had never met somebody in person. But he had it like, Hey, if you need, you need helping your drops or hit me up, let me know.

Took me six months to call him because again, I paid for some, somebody to help me. That was part of the coding boot camp that I went through. It was career service. Right. Right. So what, what was told to you that was mind blowing for you to go from 3,100, whatever applications and three interviews to what you said offline, which was seven offers or six offers. Yeah. So what, what, what's some advice that you can give individuals who are either starting out a bootcamp or just that are senior in their career too, that that may be struggling, get the interviews. Set expectations. One, it is difficult.

We live in the work from home movement, which is awesome. I love working from home. And I think everybody generally does as well. But that opens the door to everybody can try to get a job from anywhere. And so instead of having local competition, now you have national competition. And so when it comes to submitting a job application, don't be afraid to throw your hat in the ring. You miss 100% of shots you don't take. So that's one thing. Second is don't just work hard, but work smart. But make sure you're doing both of those things together. You could do networking, you could do reverse recruiting, you could do highly tailored applications to every job application that you submit, or you could try to brute force it, like was my approach back in the day, just submit applications application.

That's literally important. Exactly. Don't don't just do one or the other, do them together, do them congruently, spend the whole day doing something that you know is effective, and then look at your work in post and say, was this was this effective and was it efficient? How can I improve this process? Where am I getting the most benefit? One of the coolest things that I never thought to even think about was application to interview ratio. If I break down my job applications into a three-tiered system, I love this company. This is okay. And this is an easy apply. Where am I getting the most bang for my buck in terms of my time investment?

Fascinating. Just describing a metric, looking in post. What's the fact? What's efficient? You said so many things. I got to try to break all this down for these people. So talk, talk about those three tiered what you just talked about. Where Where did you see the most ROI? The most ROI was kind of in tier two to tier one. So tier one, I love this company, really vibing with them. I want to reach out to their engineering team that I would hopefully be working on. Don't just target recruiters, target people that work there. A referral from a fellow engineer has a lot more weight than a recruiter that says, hey, you should probably take a second look at this guy.

Massive. tier ones definitely had a lot more. I mean, we're talking like 10 applications a week at most, because they're so time consuming. You're actually looking at the network, you're actually researching the company, you know what they do if somebody. What does that look like? Are you DMing? Are you cold DMing software is at the company, software engineers at the company be like, Hey, you know, I've always wanted to work there. We'd love to chat with somebody. I mean, what was your kind of Approach because I think a lot of people you know I talk about a good DM right the three parts of a good DM right a specific question a specific amount of time and admiration flattery right and And and that I've had a lot of people DM me and they're saying actually starting to work really well for them but like I tell people like obviously go after hiring majors go after software and yours is that exactly what you did you just Sent DMS like hey, I love to get to know you.

Yes. So one fine common L. I guarantee you have something in common with this person And when you find it in a couple of clicks, probably not. Like, I had an interview at, I think it was Fullstack Academy for their senior career mentor role. And I found a Spotify song from one of the career mentors that just dabbled in music. And I quoted some of the lyrics in my interview and like, how the hell do you know that? I felt like Nardwar. And that led to the next interview. And it was crazy. It was like, just have some commonality with these people. They're all human, you are too.

Commonality is one thing. That's the best way to get your message read. The best way to get a response from your message is try to add value. And if you can't add value, at least be direct and let them know you the next steps in as little a time as possible. So how did you try to add value? Because I think that's the biggest thing that juniors have, or really not even just juniors. I think juniors, they admit. They're like, well, I can't really provide any value. How would you provide value? or did you and then you just went the direct way? An easy way to describe this would be a software engineer, software developer is a problem solver.

You make things more effective, you make things more efficient. Now, when all you think about is ones and zeros, you miss the minutiae of how things actually work, like load speeds, load times. Is this the right size? Is the UIUX actually functional? Is it friendly? If you've ever been to a government website been like, man, this needs to be updated. If you go to a regular website, you're going to click off. Like that's annoying. I go through something called the two second test. If I can't find what I'm looking for on your web page in two seconds, like your resume, your projects in about me section, I lose interest.

And so you can have that non-technical, that unexperienced I and be like, hey, is this the way that this is intended? A question can be a value add because you have the lack of experience. They're looking from something top down from such a high level. If you ask a good question to somebody that's senior, seniors love to teach juniors. That's what they do. Yeah. A junior says, what the hell is this? A senior says, oh, I've seen that before. This is, this is how you do this. I love that. I love that. So, so you started the network. So tier one, obviously was your most value add very time consuming.

I say that as well. Like it, this isn't, you're going to feel like you're doing nothing for a little bit because it's so time consuming. What was tier two again that you had some decent success with? It's not an easy apply and it's not something that you love. You're okay getting an interview. You would love for this to be experienced. If you got an offer, you could leverage it for your tier ones. Okay. I love it. I love it. So let's talk about leveraging offers. Real quick. Because it's something you said off air and I think everybody needs to hear this especially juniors talk about what happened in your job search when you actually leveraged something.

something. Yeah, so this this actually happened just in the last couple of months and this is what ultimately led to to this conversation now. I was switching from one full-time career coaching role and content curriculum development to a different company. And I have years of experience being a technical career coach. I've got four or five years of experience there. I've got four years of military experience, three years of education and administration, a bachelor's degree in linguistics, statistics certificate of completion for full-stack software engineering. I know that I'm good at what I do. It took me six months to get a full-time job offer, even knowing and applying all the same principles that we've already spoken about.

Yeah. It's just difficult to get a job sometimes, especially when you're going for something super, super specific as technical career mentor or technical career coach, because regular career coaches don't pay as much as IT career coaches. And it's subject matter. Like I'm very familiar with it. So I went through a lot of interviews, about 78 different companies that I was interviewing with over the course of six months, come the middle end of May, I was interviewing with seven companies. Okay, one company gave me a job offer and I messaged the other companies that I was actively interviewing with. All but one gave me a job offer the next day.

That's because I had already gotten one job offer. So one job offer after not getting one for months, got one job offer turned into five, six others. Nuts. So, let's throw another kind of twist into things. Johnny, are you coding right now? I'm not coding, I'm coaching. So let's talk about that, right? So obviously you went into your job search, out of college, code camp, you wanted to be a developer. What shifted and what's your biggest advice for people that are so dead set on software development where maybe they shouldn't do software development, they should do something else in tech. If you recognize that in tech, your applications need to be responsive, dynamic and accessible, make yourself that way.

Be responsive, be accessible, be dynamic, be constantly updating, constantly improving, continuous improvement, continuous deployment, development. Don't be so hard-headed and so solely focused on one thing that you miss all the opportunities that are surrounding it. Cybersecurity is very near and dear to my heart as being militarily involved. And I work with a lot of vets that go to cybersecurity because of security clearances, things like that. A lot of them start their career going through IT help desk. Now I'm not saying that you need to have a no code role to get into a company to then be promoted internally, but be open to like QA testing, be open to low code environments, UI UX work, get in and talk to the people, impress people.

It is so much easier to get promoted internally than to organically restart your search from scratch. I did not pay him to say this, by the way, but thank you for reiterating everything that I say. I appreciate it. But what happened with you internally, man? I mean, what clicked with you going through the job search, but you know what? I don't know if I want to code it anymore. I want to coach. Like what? What clicked? When the piece of pasta finally stuck to the wall, the insanity approach, the shotgun approach of I'm going to blast my resume out as many times as I can for six months 3,128.

Getting Jason's very specific help, like I said earlier, getting a heart surgery operation from a heart surgeon rather than a veterinarian like healthcare adjacent, like kind of sketchy. We're going like zombie times now. We can do better. I had my first job off for a 19 days after starting to work with Jason. Wow. Wow. And I didn't even submit that many job applications. It was just happening. You went six months, the spray and pray method, what you were kind of taught, like you went six months with 3,100, some applications submitted, only three interviews. And then you found this Jason Humphreys guy. And in 19 days taking his advice, you already got offers?

Got one job offer. Monumental. Change my life. That's crazy. life to the point where I could have a much better impact using my empathy and sympathy of job search blows. Let's work on this together. That's what click for you. Is that like you saw it work. You're like, what if I could replicate or duplicate this for others? You also didn't pay me to say this, but to be an advocate for somebody else is how I got started. That's awesome. So, you know, Obviously, you know, kind of the last 10 minutes here, I mean, I definitely want to get a little bit more tactical and kind of some things that you did.

So let's talk about your DM strategy again. I know you said ask questions. Can you give an example of like how your traditional DM would go, how you would search? I mean, is there any tips or tricks really from like the tactical part of using LinkedIn that you can share? Yeah, so the way that I got this job at Pathrise, my full-time job. There is a recruiter. I went to the pathrise. I'm like, okay, I know what they do. They're following school to help you get your job as a software engineer, software developer, cybersecurity, and we're even going into non-technical tracks. Found a recruiter, Erica Holloway, and I said, oh, hey, looked on her profile.

Sawed that she was also a thinkful bootcamp alumni. Started my message with fellow thinkful boot camp alumni. So when she opened her her connections or her her requests, the very first thing that she saw it was Johnny Sharer, open to work banner, fellow thinkful boot camp alumni. So that was that was what started it. And then I said, hey, I don't think pathrise is actively hiring. But if they are in the future, I have a very compatible skill set. I'd love to just talk to you if you have time. Here's my Calendly link, open up my my calendar link, my calendar is right there. Whatever time is there works for me because I set up the calendar.

That's how you, that's how you. So I am, I am bullish on Cowanley. I'm also trying to get that Cowanley sponsorship. So if anybody knows anybody at Cowanley, let me know. But basically I, so did you have good feedback sending people a Cowanley? Because I've heard of pushback, it's like, well, you're kind of wanting something from somebody then sending your county can be a put off. Did you have any problems with that at all? Of course. Of course. Okay. There's pros and cons to every strategy. If you're not AB testing, you're not trying. So I love it, dude. You got such a great mindset with all of that.

Like I said, it's not just about brute forcing. It's not just about hard work. Hard work and grit and determination can get you far in life. But and working smarter can also get you very far in life. But when you combine the two, was this really a good use of my time? What's this effective? Do you need to do multiple weeks worth of work and then look in retrospect and see, was that efficient? Do it every day, journal every morning, journal every figure it out. The data's, you are the data, figure it out. That's what you do. But you, so you stuck with Calonly though.

Like you got more responses than not off-calonly. Correcting Calonly? I did. Okay, cool, awesome. And then, so I talk about usually two strategies to recruit, would I do some one-on-one counseling sessions? And so I'm definitely curious, yeah, Christina, Johnny's dropping some really good, yeah, we're getting real tactical here, I love it. So I say two ways to approach it, right? You can either search developers in your area, because I would start locally, because you have something in common, right? Like if I messaged a guy, I mean, I just went to Chicago, but like I'm not in Chicago, right? So I'm not gonna have the, quite the rapport as if I'd met just somebody in Nashville, right?

Hey, did you catch the Nashville sounds game yesterday, right? Like that, there's a little bit more important. I say usually start with developers first, messes the developers, start conversations there, or you can search jobs, but that's a little bit more tedious because then you gotta go to the company page and then you gotta go find the people who are at the company and then kind of scroll through. Did you have one method that works better than the other? I would always start locally. And the reason for this is because if you are willing to entertain the idea of in-person work, you are beating out 99% of the United States.

I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Even if people are still applying, like I applied for a role that I did not realize was in person for, I think we can code it in Indianapolis, Indiana, got on the phone like, Hey, this is a local role. I'm like, oh, well, I'm in Savannah, Georgia. It's one heck of a commute, brother. So we left it there. Hey, if we have any remote opportunities, thanks. And that recruiter is the only recruiter that has ever actually called me back and said, hey, I've got a remote opportunity. Everybody says, oh yeah, we'll stay in touch. I'll give you a call back.

Never, except for this one guy. But yeah, I would definitely always look local. local first would you search would you search like JavaScript developer enter and then see all the local JavaScript devs and you would just start messaging them that way I would I would find the industry that I would like to work for so I love education my background as a teacher makes that that pivot a little bit less pivoting little rounder on the edge and so I primarily targeted edtech companies because I wanted to be doing technology for education because that's I love it. That was my whole whole spiel. And so that made that a little bit easier for me.

So I target the actual industry. Then your DM can be like, hey, like I'm super passionate. Hey, Johnny, you know, I'm super passionate about EdTech. You know, I went to school for this, you know, passionate about this. That way it allows your DM to be a little bit more human. Off the rip, you've got nothing in common. You were in education. Exactly. teacher administrator here. Nice to meet you. Yeah, I love that. Also, dev. I mean, that's fine. Yeah. I mean, I think messaging them like, Hey, do you have your own calendar link before I send mine? Obviously, that's usually the easiest. I mean, that's that's totally fine.

All right, as we wrap up here, Johnny, it's so good. Is there any is there? I have one more question I want to wrap up with, but there's any other piece of advice that that you want to give to people who are about to enter the job search who are currently in it. Yes. There's a couple of things. So one, when you cultivate your network, you have the ability to post on LinkedIn. The Pareto principle, 20% of the effort gives you 80% of the result. Connect with people in that sort of spread as well. Connect with 80% of the people that you connect with, connect with people that understand what you do.

They speak your language pun intended, JavaScript, Python, Java. Start posting, adding little gems, nuggets of value, ask questions. Don't just just post something arbitrarily engage with people, build your network that way. When you tap into somebody individually, you tap into their network as well. So if you actually have this dialogue over time, the 20% that's over here, those are the recruiters, those are the people that you actually want to like hoard towards and focus onto your profile. But in order for them to see you, you have to have something engaging. So one, don't just go ham on engineers or devs. Don't just go ham on recruiters.

Do both. Be actively and passively visible. If your profile is set up in the right way, people will find you. But then when you post, when you connect, that's active, you can be doing two things at the same time, active and passive. Next would be trying to think. Treat conversations like a bank, like a social banking system, invest before you withdraw. So try to add value that that's the whole like let's have a conversation. Hey, also fellow, thankful bootcamp grad, not sure if you're actively hiring right now, but I've got five plus years of experience so on and so forth value at value at if you have time, I'd love to talk to you if you have time, here's an option, you have people options.

If you want, take asking for recommendation. If you want a recommendation from somebody that you really respect or industry thought leader, that's probably really busy. Write them a draft of a recommendation, leave some room for them to have improvements. I guarantee you 85% more likely than before if you just off the rip ass somebody for a recommendation or an endorsement. You're like, Hey, can you do this for me? You're like the third person that's brought up that in the last week on my show. It's important, man. That's interesting. That's awesome. Social bank system. I love that. I love that a ton. You know, I think that's where a lot of people get it wrong.

They asked too early, you know, it's definitely a slow game, which is why everything that Johnny's talking about and a lot of the guests have had on. You have to do it over time. Because you kind of can't rush this because people will feel it and they won't want to talk to you. Last question is we wrap it up here. And again, thank you so much. So we had guidance counselors in middle school, high school. And by the way, if anyone's watching still, first off, thank you. Second off, now it's time to ask questions as we wrap it up. So, Johnny, we have, we had guidance counselors in elementary school, middle school, and high school.

But now as adults, we don't have them. Well, they're called therapists, but we don't have them now. What would your biggest advice be to your younger self? Do I beat my younger self up so hard? Um, don't overthink things. Don't spend so much time worrying about efficiency. It's a, it's a balance. It's a balancing act. Do work. Don't just put it off because there's a better approach elsewhere waiting for something to come by. Do both work hard and then in post, how can I do this better? How could I be more efficient? How could I be more effective? What does that look like? If I don't have the answer, Who am I going to find out that does?

Yeah. So you're a content guy yourself. I am. And so you and I can obviously bond over this sentiment. I think that's the idea of the idea of content, which is what I've learned, which I really, really think applies to all areas in your and everyone's life, is do first, then evaluate. I think so many times people evaluate before they do, and it slows them down. Analysis paralysis. Yeah, for example, there's one individual I know. runs a business. He's been running business for a bit now. And we talk content every time we get together. And this individual is still debating on colors and brand strategy and how to do this.

And I'm, it's been two years. And I've, I've, I've, I've lapped this person now because of it. And I will tell you this, I think a lot of people sit on the sidelines Trying to figure out the whole play before they even play and Like it just can't happen like you have to do us to just go out and do you have to just do it execute and then if it sucks Just figure it out for the next try But you can't just sit on the sideline trying to map everything out before you get started. Absolutely And we live in a culture that is so focused on efficiency first.

I mean, I'm big into video games. I watch video games because I'm a parent now and I don't have time to actually play anything. Everybody wants to do, hey, what's the most efficient, most effective X, Y or Z? Like, don't worry about it. Just have fun. Enjoy every positive or negative experience that you have, whether it be in submitting job applications, actual interviews, both are opportunities to learn and grow. Don't just focus on the failures and be like, man, I just got to try again. Why did you fail? Can you gain some sort of insight, some information? That's important. The biggest thing that people don't want to invest in you on when it comes to the actual job itself, find out what they don't have time to teach you.

If that is teachability, then you need to teach yourself to be teachable. That's difficult for some people to swallow. A hundred percent. Two more questions will wrap it up here. Randall comes in, can value added just be connecting non common ground. That's fine. I think I think connecting on common ground if you message me and you're like, Hey, I see you like Gary Vaynerchuk did did you hear about his last podcast session with so and so that that's a value add still. even though it's common ground because maybe I haven't seen that episode and I'm going to go check it out. So I absolutely think even just having common ground is a value add.

And then Ryan comes in and did a career shift with the local bootcamp still in my first jobs as a dev two years in but leaning towards product on a roll. What is your opinion on that shift into product ownership and what are some tips for doing that? Do it. Yeah. Read the job descriptions. Take take Take a spreadsheet. Ask questions, ask other products. This is, you know what Ryan? This is a great excuse for you to network. I would, if I were Ryan, Ryan, what I would do if I were you and I know Ryan real well. Ryan, I would literally get all linked in.

I would type in the word product owner in Nashville, press enter and I would DM every single product owner and go, hey, product owner, I'm thinking about moving into product ownership. Do you have advice for me? And use that as a tool to network. Just my thoughts. It's perfect. All right, cool. That is it for today. I gotta hop into a meeting here soon. Johnny, stay on real quick. I wanna say bye to you out there. Y'all, thank you again for tuning in this morning. So tomorrow I will be live just me, but I'm headed off to Code of Palooza to speak in two sessions this week.

So tomorrow, guidance counts are 2.0, and I'll be off for the rest of the week. So tune in tomorrow. And we will go from there. Twitter spaces, thanks for tuning in today. And Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Thank you so much. Y'all go connect with Johnny. Johnny, you're the best. Thanks, buddy. Thanks for having me. See y'all. 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.