from tech recruiter to developer w/andrew coleman who is a react recruiting lead at bitov

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auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

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 tdesntesnyn. 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. that is so Andrew give a background give the people what they want who are you what do you do and we'll go from there yeah for sure so currently I'm a JavaScript developer and consultant for a company called the Tovie we're a JavaScript consulting firm so work with all kinds of brands from things you never heard of to like fortune 500 brands so get to work on a lot of interesting stuff and I'm sure we'll dig in more, but before that, but in the before times, I was actually a recruiter myself.

Yeah. And I didn't realize that when I booked Andrew. Yeah, so we can get into some of that. I was a recruiter for a bit, and then before that I had a bit of an adventure as kind of more traditional management consultant, kind of market research kind of stuff. And then before that was my other ill-fated adventure as an actor and lived in theater land. So I have, if you look at my, I think still my Twitter header, I made this graphic that's a little Shakespeare and then a tie and then a laptop because you know, it's actor, consultant, software developer. So that's the circuitous path.

I love that, I love that. All right, so, and also too, Shout-out for Andrew for doing that on his LinkedIn. So I talk about the banner photo being incredibly important, and that tells you a little bit about Andrew. Also, if you hear children laughing, my daughter's having breakfast. I've strapped her into her high chair as I'm doing this live because mom is out this morning. So I am multi-talented. Don't tell my wife that. All right, so, Andrew, first thing I wanna talk about, the three C's of the job search framework. So you email me so I get an automated email to kind of let my guests know to start thinking a certain way and Andrew emailed me kind of four things.

We're going to talk about the three C's of the job search for his framework, networking versus applications, the shiny shiny object syndrome and the power referrals, all which are incredibly incredibly important. And I can tell this man used to be a recruiter because obviously there's there's definitely a few things that we agree on there. So three C's of the job search man. What does that mean? And let's type into those. Yeah, absolutely. So that's something I kind of thought about well, I was going to do my own job search, trying to break into tech. And it's got it coming from the kind of stand out of the idea of knowing that just like hopelessly applying to job after job is like not the way to job search and focusing more on building my skills, connecting with people, networking, et cetera.

And so I came up with this idea of 3Cs, which is code content connection. So code, yeah, code content connection. So code, and I think you can generalize this too. If you're not a software developer, just switch code for craft, whatever it is you do, you gotta be doing that, right? But I'm a software developer, so I'll stick with that. So you gotta be coding, right? You gotta be keeping your skills up, you gotta be improving your skills, you gotta be building stuff. You know, that I think is the great thing about tech is that for the most part, there, you can at least find places where no one cares about your credentials, the only credential that matters is can you build, can you do the thing that you are asking us to pay you to do?

So you gotta be doing it if you're looking for a job. And then I think while you're doing that, I think you should be taking notes every, everything that you're doing, I say if you've got an hour a day to dedicate to writing some code as part of your, if you're unemployed, if you're looking for a job, take 15 minutes of that and set it aside for even just like journaling about what you did. Because then you're gonna have all this content that you can take and refine and you can put it on Twitter, you can put it on Medium, you can put it on LinkedIn, you can share all the stuff that you're doing and that you're learning.

And then the worst case scenario is that nobody reads it. And then you have a record for yourself of the things you've done and the things you've learned. And that's worst case. That's worst case, exactly. So the worst case scenario is you end up with this catalog of stuff that you can just control F and be like, Oh man, I forgot how I solved X, Y, Z problem. I remember I did that. Oh, I wrote that blog about it. Let me go pull that up and you've got that. And that's the worst case scenario. The more realistic scenario is you get that and at least a couple people find your stuff they connect with you.

And it just does the work for you a little bit. You write something once and then it's out there. I think it's Sean Wang who talks about doing stuff like that and how it's just like helps you make friends just without doing any work. Like you put the workhead in the front and then people keep finding your stuff. And then the, so that leads into the third one, connection, which is, you know, people find you from your, the stuff you're publishing. You reach out to people, you connect with them because I'm sure we'll get deeper into this too. But, you know, connecting, networking is the way to, you know, advance your job search and get what you want.

So I think it's kind of a, if you do it right, it becomes kind of a flywheel, right? if you're building enough, if you're building a lot, you generate a lot of content, you're generating a lot of content, more people are finding your stuff and connecting with you, and which might lead to more opportunities to build stuff with new people. So you're building more, you're making more content, you're connecting with more people, it all feeds into itself and keeps going. And also, if you're, and I think it also helps you stay away from what I think most people get into in the job search, but it's just like, I'm going to send 100 applications today.

And why haven't I gotten a job yet? I've been for months, I've been sending out 100 applications a day and I haven't seen anything well because that's not effective and if you do these things, it's going to be much more effective for you. So that's a three C's. I love that. I love that. Yeah. And I do want to give a shout out to two conferences upcoming. I'll be at Little Rock Tech Fest. If you are near or drivable distance of Little Rock Arkansas, I would highly consider going. I like to go to conferences where I know the founders and kind of know their mission.

And I think what I actually have Paul Gower on tomorrow on the show, who's organizing Little Rock Tech Fest, but incredible tech community down in Little Rock. It's a wonderful, it's like a upper mid-sized conference, 600, 700 people. So you're going to be able to make a lot of new connections. And it still feels intimate. It's not quite as big as some of the other ones. So, and then I'll be at Momentum, Momentum, the following week in Cincinnati. So hope to see you all there. Yeah, what Lisa said right here, notes, classes, post your journey. People, people are like, Taylor, it can't be this simple, but it kind of is.

Right? I mean, or, or, or are we not seeing that correctly? No, I, I think, I think it is, which isn't to say that it's easy. No, like it's really, yeah. Yeah, it's really difficult. It's really hard to do things, do these things well and to do it, um, you know, to do it consistently and for the amount of time that it might take, you know, especially depending, you know, if you're, you know, if you're a software developer and you're, and you're good, you're, you're not going to, you're probably going to have the best time of anyone drops searching. But you know, if you're not in that situation, you know, it could take, you know, it could take you a while.

So it's not, it's not easy. Right. But yeah, it is, it is pretty simple. Do the thing that you want to be doing, you know, whether that's coding, whether that is, content writing, well, that's probably that example, because the second one is kind of right. But yeah, do the thing that you want to be doing or some or however you can, however, like the closer that you can get to the possible, right? It'd probably be difficult to be, you know, if you're a recruiter and trying to get a job, right? It's a little difficult to like be doing recruiting if you're not in a stab, what establish on your own or like working for an agency, right?

So, but like figure out like what is it that you can do that is that can, and you know that you can show someone saying, hey look at this, I know I don't like, I don't have a job right now, but I can do the thing you wanna do. Cause we all know like who doesn't, you get bombarded with job offers or interview requests when you're employed. And then as soon as you don't have a job, recruiters start talking to you less, which we could get into. I know Taylor's the recruiter against recruiters. So we could get into all of that stuff as well. But yeah.

Absolutely. And we can definitely, we can definitely get that. and Michael, it's great to see you and my daughter's laughing at our jokes from the kitchen. So networking versus application, so you briefly mentioned, listen, as a former recruiter, I'm sure you can speak to this. Why should you say, and again, I've interviewed so many people about this, but I wanted to connect with one new person today, why should you be networking, how to network right now versus submitting applications? Yeah, okay, so first I'll go first on why submitting application sucks, which is and I don't have any uh I'll preface this with like the numbers I'm about to give are totally like made up but I think it's kind of a good mental mental model and this was kind of what we uh when I was a recruiter you know when we were talking to you know job seekers and candidates kind of coaching them on how to approach their their job search.

But these are kind of the rough numbers that we would give them, which was, you know, only expect only about 50% of all possible jobs you could be getting to be posted as like a, you know, a job add on LinkedIn or wherever you're looking. So only 50% of the jobs you could possibly be getting are out there. And then only 50% of those are actually going to get filled through that ad, right? Some big chunk of them are they're only, they already know who they're going to hire. just posting it because, you know, from HR or an Eagle Tell them that they have to, right?

Or whatever the situation is, or they'll post it and then it'll fill, you know, then, you know, an employee will say, hey, I actually, you know, my buddy is perfect for this job interview him, right? And someone else comes in through networking in a referral. So if you're only applying to jobs, you're limiting yourself to, I think at best 25% of the jobs that you would be able to really get your hat in the ring for. So do you want to spend all your time on 25% of the possible jobs or do you want to not do that? So that is how so many people, I think, approach a job search.

I say it's like the shotgun approach or spray and pray. You're just like applications, applications, applications. And it doesn't, it so rarely leads anywhere. And I don't want to say not to send out online applications. I think you should do some and you should be intentional about it. like my job in the movie. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. You know what I was supposed to say? My job, like I got my job, my current job, like my first job in tech through an application, which like kind of like I wish I got another way because it would be a real good story to tell. But I want to apply, but I got the job that way.

Yeah, no, but so, but there was, it wasn't just like a, oh, like a one click apply on LinkedIn or just like, you know, paste some generic answers into their, you know, the questions they ask can send out for my generic resume. It was, you know, I, I, I, I saw the job posting. I looked at it. I just got, I got the sense that, okay, these are people that are actually going to read my cover letter and look at things and isn't going to be, I think, like, and now that I actually help, you know, at least for our React department at the Tovii, I basically, you know, I'm kind of in charge of recruiting.

And so now it's even clearer if you, when we're hiring React devs, if you like the first line on the job posting up top, it just says, hey, note, our consultants actually look at this. Like if you apply one of our consultants, we'll be taking time away from clients to review your application. It'll be me. Like I am said consultant, but. Right, so like, you know, please, please, please, take help Andrew. Have the answers. Like actually, this isn't, you know, we know people use computers to screen resumes and read it. We don't do that. Some, a real person will look at your app. So right, you see something like that.

That's worth putting some time into you, and that's an application that's worth doing. But stuff that's like, man, I hate one click apply on LinkedIn and like, it's just a waste of time. It makes you feel good because you're like, wow, I sent 50 applications today. What a productive day on the job search. Like, yeah, you did. It's such a mind fuck. And I'm just gonna say it, right? And Chelsea, it's great to see you. And then Michael, hopefully LinkedIn live's working for people, but I'm glad you're here. It's such a mind fuck because we are taught completely different, right? We are taught activity, activity.

I submitted 300 applications today. But then if I told you, but then, but then, but if you said I talked to one VP of engineering today. Worth a thousand applications. Right. And but people just don't know that. And it's, and it's terrifying. And listen, I get it. And I've said this constantly. I've never been on the job search. Well, I have. Like before I found Vaco, I was, I was on the job search, but it happened so fast. But I got the job through a referral, right? I got the job because I had a crush on this girl who didn't like me. She liked my lead singer instead.

And then, you know, what about it? But all that being said, it's just, you have to switch your narrative. You have to switch the narrative in the way of thinking. Yeah, yeah. So I think you got to connect instead of a plan. So I get onto kind of that bit of it, which I think just like any way you can, right? Like I'd expand your view of like what, Like if you think networking is a dirty word, like dig into that and figure out why, like it doesn't have to be gross, it doesn't have to be transactional, it shouldn't be if you're doing it right, right?

And I think expand, important too, to expand your thought of like what your network is, right? Like, oh, it's like the people that I've worked with, like yes, that's part of it, but like, so is your family or your roommates or your, you know, your friends, you never know, right? Like tech example, like, you know, I might not consider my brother part of my network because he works in geoscience and works in some lab and they might need a website. They probably have what they might be hiring a web developer at some point. And that is still a valuable connection. And in terms of growing your network, I think that you have to almost treat kind of how people treat applications.

It's kind of a numbers game as well, right? It's just the numbers game that you actually have a chance of winning, right? So I think you find, like ideally you find someone, like the perfect person to find, right? Is I think someone who is active on whatever platform you're looking at, whether that's Twitter or LinkedIn, and I think Twitter's a better LinkedIn than LinkedIn as we could get into that. But you find someone who's active on a platform so you can connect with them. They are currently working at a place that you want to work that has a job opening that you fit. And you have some other, you can make some other connection to them that isn't just, hey, I think you're cool and your company is cool and I want to work there.

If that's all you got, fine. But if you can find something else that is even better. So like for me, like I would look, like look for people who are active on a platform who I can find something like, are they a skier? Are they into theater? Like those are like two things, boom, instantly I can connect with them, right? Or I'll look at like, look at like alumni from your college or your high school or you know, anything you can say, hey, like even like grad school, like I talk about dropping out of grad school, I did not have a good time in grad school.

But if I see someone who went to UCF that I want to connect with them, I'm like, hey, go night, let's chat, right? Well, and I want to go back to say, to, and I'm going to have to have you back because time's fine. And I want to talk to you like for nine hours. But we, one thing that you said I want to highlight is be aware of that person being active on social. So if for those of you who remember my conversation with Connor Bush, Connor Bush is a developer in Nashville. He got his job at Netflix because at the time he was DMing managers at Netflix because he wanted to work there when he was at his current job.

And he noted the managers that were active on LinkedIn from the activity portion. And so the fact that you said that like listen, if you go message a bunch of managers on Twitter and LinkedIn that have been active in 90 days, like that's not going to do anything also. So I love that. Because they won't see it, right? Because they're not there. I don't think one more thing on just tactically, like how to do it. Like say something. Right? Like don't just. Yeah. Not hey. Yeah. And not just hey. Like what the character limit on LinkedIn is for like a message on a connector bus.

For 40. I mean, you could fit characters in there. You could fit a bunch in there. So like don't be just like clicking, like put a message in there, right? Like say something. Like, you know what? like connect with me and be like, hey, I saw you on, you know, on guidance counselor 2.0. That's it. That's all you need it. Right. I'm an idiot. Exactly. And I'm like, okay, great. I'll accept that. If you just like connect with me, I'm going to be like, who is this person? Like, I don't, I don't have this person. I have no idea. Why? Like, maybe I'm in a good mood and I click accept and like I could figure it out after that.

But like, maybe I'm not. And then I might just click decline and then, you know, not game over. But, you know, but you know, so you can avoid that if you just say something, right? And you don't need to burn your in-mails or have LinkedIn premium or whatever. Just got 360 characters, whatever. If you don't need link, you really don't. I, as a recruiter, don't even have LinkedIn premium. And I'm wildly successful connecting with people because I create a very intentional note. Yeah. All right. Next thing I want to get to. Shiny object syndrome. What do you mean by that? Yeah. Oh, man. This is more specifically for people trying to break into tech or like newer devs.

So it's pretty specific to that area. But man, I think it's a killer. I saw so many folks that I went to boot camp with. So I did like a coding boot camp. That's how I broke in tech. And so many people I went to boot camp with as soon as we finish, they were like, all right, I'm going to go learn C sharp. Now I'm going to go do game development. I'm going to go learn. I want to learn some Java so I can do some like really heavy back end stuff. I'm going to learn Python. So I have another language and I was just like, Oh my god, y'all just spent 15 grand to learn react and no development.

And you have four months of experience with it. Like why are you, you're just finding a new shiny object and running after that. And so you never develop the depth of experience and expertise that you need to. No one is hiring anyone who knows a little bit of JavaScript and Python and Java and C-sharp and C++. No one is looking for that person. Tons of people are looking for someone who is really good at JavaScript development or really good at Python or really good at whatever it is. You know, no one is looking for that really thin, super generalist person. And I saw so many people get slowed down by that or honestly, some folks completely like, like some people who never broke into tech and just kind of kind of gave up.

And I think that was one factor is that they never, you know, focused. Obviously, do things that you're interested in. Keep, you gotta keep your motivation up, you gotta keep doing stuff. But yeah, if you wanna do game development, you just took a web dev bootcamp. Like learn some 3D JavaScript libraries and make a little browser game. Do that instead, because then at least you're still doing the thing that you are trying to do. So avoid shiny objects, focus on the thing that you're trying to get to. I love that. And my daughter's getting a little restless. So we're going to hit the last topic and then, Andrew, we'll just bring you on in November.

So power of referrals. So and I think this is a great topic to drive home, especially somebody who was a recruiter. I actually tweeted this this morning that, so you know that game. So I grew up in Southern Baptist ministry. So I youth group all the time, yada, yada. And I think I never played this, but there was a youth group trick or game where like you start with a penny and you go and see how much you could get by trading the penny. And there were people that got cars. Like there were people that, you know, somebody gave them a quarter and then somebody gave them a dollar and then the dollar became a teddy bear.

The teddy bear became $25 and they kept going. That's what referrals should be, ideally after one cold, after one cold connection, you should never have another cold connection from here on out. So go ahead and expand on that. Yeah, I think something that, you know, I think people will get nervous trying to like make cold connections with people because they're like, oh, I feel like I'm intruding on their time. Like I'm asking for something. And I think really important, especially in tech, but I think like most companies, any company that you'd want to work for certainly has some sort of referral program where if their current employees refer someone to an open job and that person gets hired, that employee gets a bonus.

Like they get paid and often a substantial one. Like not, you know, like even in tech where, you know, salaries can be ridiculous, it can still be like, you know, an amount of money that feels real good, right? Like I was telling, tell her before we got on one of my, a good buddy of mine from my bootcamp, I referred him to my company, he got hired, he just hit his one year mark. And so I got the bulk of my referral bonus from him, literally while I was on vacation with my girlfriend in Greece, so I texted him and I was like, Man, I'm lighting my money on fire right now on vacation.

Thanks for sticking around a year because this bonus is coming in so clutch. So like when you're connecting with people, know that if it all works out, like the best case scenario is really good for you and them. And also please, dear God, connect with someone before you apply. Was I, it is like, it's my stomach just like sinks. Any time someone was like, hey, like reach it up to me and says, hey, I applied to Potovey last week and I wanted to connect with you. and I'm like, ah, come on, man. Like you probably, like you, maybe you're still in the pipeline, but probably at this point, you might not have made it through the resume screen.

And so you're out. And if you had, if you had flopped the order, then, you know, a referral would have been usually good enough for like a first round interview. That's kind of my mental, that's current. Certainly how I treat them at the Tovi. When I'm doing recruiting and I think that's a good mental model to have. If you have a referral, it's usually good for at least a first round interview. So you get in the door and then also then like, man, if someone were to apply to Potovi and then to like get into the interview pipeline and then a week later message being say, hey, like I wanted to connect with you, I applied to Potovi.

I'd be so mad because I'd be like, man, that's like several grand that I just missed out on because this for I could have referred this person. They would have had an easier time interviewing and I would have benefited. And it's just so it's, you know, almost infuriating sometimes with that, you know, when that happens, people do that out of order. So if you can, you know, obviously sometimes like there is some time pressure on applications and whatnot, but if you can connect with someone before you apply to something, then you know, then do that, right? Especially if you can find someone that you can connect with again on something other than, Hey, I think your company's cool and I want to work there and say, Hey, like, you know, I wanted to connect with you because I saw you on Taylor's podcast and you know blah blah blah you know I'm gonna apply for this job like any tips and I'll be like yeah here's a tip use this referral link it'll you know you'll have a better time right so it is immensely powerful and and helps everyone so you know because it's like Kevin saying cold connections are rough flip that mindset cold connections are you know potentially a new job for you and several thousand dollars for the person you're connecting with and it all That's pretty good for everyone.

And I'll tell you this, listen, I'm a huge introvert. People are shocked when I tell him this, but I'm just like wired up on caffeine now. But like my thing is, is like, Kevin, and in the world that we live in today with Twitter and LinkedIn, it should never be difficult because you can evaluate someone's LinkedIn. So it's so much easier to network over social media. Why? Because you can take things, you have the chance to review someone's profile before you DM them. So, but like, so like for example, if Andrew came up to me at a conference, I would have time to check him out.

So, that would be a rough conversation. But Kevin, and this is for everybody, I don't mean single Kevin, I just brought up a good point. If you can push networking via social media, you can go to my LinkedIn, say I like Gary Vaynerchuk, say, hey listen, I saw where you like Gary Vaynerchuk, we'd love to talk to you. Or hey, I saw you like the Buffalo Bills, how about that loss yesterday to Miami Dolphins, right? And most people will talk to you if you bring in something from their profiles to be very focused on that. The two best DMs I've ever received on Twitter, like JobSars related, was someone who messaged me and said, hey, I'm an aspiring dev, I'm trying to break an attack and I'd love to chat with you about that.

But actually I'd love to talk with you about Shakespeare because I see that you're really into Shakespeare and I'm a big Shakespeare nerd. And I was like, hey, I'm dead. I'm like, yeah, like that person, that was when I was actually doing like a ton of like coffee with folks who were doing the 100 devs for bootcamp. So I was getting, I had tons of messages, that person, boom, top of the list immediately. The other one was someone who messaged me and said, I see you're a big Boston Bruins fan because, you know, Hot Season's about to start, my Twitter's about to be all Bruins all the time.

And he said, I am a huge Buffalo Sabres fan. So, you know, let's chat, hockey tech, you can make fun of me for rooting for a solid hockey game tonight. I got my talking. Our club could go for our 100th win tonight. Oh boy, that's excited. That's exciting. Just those little things. And those people were instantly top of my list. I still remember them. I actually followed them back on Twitter, right? Cause I'm like, okay, I'm connecting with a person that is actually interested in things that I'm also interested in beyond like, oh, get a job in tech. Like that's great and all. But like, yeah, a little bit more.

It's great too. Absolutely. All right. So we're gonna end it cause my daughter is ready to get off of the kitchen table, get down from her chair. Andrew, thank you, ma'am. This was a blast. Thank you for everybody who tuned in. Highly connected to Andrew. Andrew, we'll get you back on, because I still want to talk about your jobs for a sort of entertainment get to. Yeah, absolutely. Twitter spaces, go connect with Andrew. And thank y'all for tuning in. And Andrew, you have a great rest of week, big dog. Yeah, you too, man. Happy to be here and happy to come back whenever. All right, buddy.

All right, see y'all. Y'all have a good Monday. Bye. 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 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, then don't do it. So thank you again.

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