how to break into tech (solo show)

full transcript

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 vacovac.com is how to get in touch with me old-fashioned email social media at tdsintdessey. 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. Make it in the tech. So I will tell you this. So if you go the non-college non-boot camp route, you have your work cut out for you. I'm just going to say that. There's no being around a bush. I would highly recommend, so the reasons why I would highly recommend boot camps.

And please hear me out here. The reason why I would recommend boot camps, even over college is because Zuberra, I'll definitely cover this. I'll cover late off people too. We'll try to cover the game this morning. If you're looking to get in the tech, the reason why I always recommend boot camps over college and self-paced is because of the community. So I volunteered in National Software School and speak from time to time. And I run a search. I run a search almost every time I give that presentation. And it looks, every time I run that report, there's over 1,000 alumni in Nashville. There's 1,000 alumni on LinkedIn from National Software School.

What I tell everybody is you need to start there. You need to start with your community. And that's why I tell people, now I'll tell you this too. If you went to college, I didn't know how to do that. I was really networking college. Most people don't. Most people don't know how to teach how to network in college. And so for me, what I would tell you is, even if you're out of college now and trying to make it, I would run a search on LinkedIn of your university. So I have a search built in for university's South Carolina Game Cox, Go Game Cox. I went to university's South Carolina.

And I've had a few people message me. That found me through the South Carolina Network. And they always say, hey, go Cox, right? Because that's our mascot. And I immediately respond back to them. We are automatically always going to be able, we're going to be more apt to respond to people who have gone through the same trials. And just the same, I guess the same area, not trials, trials. I mean college, college has some trials, right? Let's be honest, college has some trials. But we are always bonded with people who have gone through the same experiences we've had. So that's why I tell people to do that.

I want to give, there's a few more comments coming in here. I love it. Every other Monday and Fridays could be hangout with Taylor times. I love it. Hey, LinkedIn user, this is big. I want to congratulate this LinkedIn user. Filing broke one cam, questions. I'm LinkedIn. Hey, this is huge. This is huge. So again, congratulations, LinkedIn user. This needs to be celebrated. So congratulations. DR to your to funny. And then I'm a success start from boot camp. Still going strong. He's right. The community definitely gets to do. Now, now here's the deal. If you are going to take the road alone, right, and you are going to do a self paced curriculum, what I would do is I would spend half your day networking, right?

And I know you're so tired of this. And listen, I know there are people right now who are looking for a job who are struggling, right? And it takes time, right? But what I would do first off, I want to stress this. I want to stress this. John comes here. So true. I've hired a boot camp alum and I've been hired by a boot camp alum. Exactly. I would always go with boot camp. But if you don't have the money, you don't have the means to go to the boot camp. What I would do is I would structure your day. Your day needs to look like eight to five.

I think hold on. Carpetime. By the way, we're back to coffee after a 10 day cleanse. So good. It comes to the job search, especially trying to find a job, not through boot camp alumni, not through college alumni, but on your own. It is a full time job. You need to be disciplined enough to go eight to five every day. And you're from from the hours of eight to 12. You need to be networking. Why? You need to be on LinkedIn. You need to be on Twitter commenting, liking, engaging, asking people for a conversation. There's a guy today. Again, my, I eat my own dog food, right?

I take my own advice. I literally, there, there was a gentleman on LinkedIn. He was a recruiter. He's got like 5,000 followers or 15,000 followers on LinkedIn. He posts about content creation, right? And the importance of it, right? I slid into his DM today and I said, Hey, I said, I love that post. I really, really do. I love that post. I would love to bring you on to my podcast. And he says, yes, right now you probably tell, where if I don't have a podcast, have a conversation, have a conversation. But here's where people mess up, right? People like, well, I don't have something to give.

I don't have something to offer. I'm too young. What am I going to give that person? You have it all wrong. You have it all wrong. You need to ask about them. Like, do you are saying I've never talked, never, he and I have never talked to get in person, right? But he and I built a relationship to where if I'm, if I'm ever coming through Columbia, I'm going to hit up the ark day, right? And all we've done is comment and like engage and he shows up here and I comment back and through our texting community, right? It works because here's the deal, right?

People just want to be heard. And that is the biggest thing, right? And so, so when you hop on a call, right, let's say you hop on a call with me and your junior developer, you can't offer me anything. But if you ask me about the role of content creation in my career and how it can apply to you, I'm going to give you that time of day. I'm going to give you that time of day, right? And so it's so incredibly important to ask the person, right? We go through, I talk about it all the time. The three steps to create a good DM.

First, admiration, flattery. Hey, Taylor, I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing from a content creation perspective. Second thing, ask a specific question. Hey, Taylor, I would love to know about how content creation plays into the job search and how can I apply it. And the third thing is a specific amount of time. Hey, Taylor, can I have seven minutes of your time? Remember, don't say five minutes, don't say 10 minutes, right? All of our moms say, you got five minutes to talk. No one's got five minutes to talk because that means an hour, right? So again, that's what you need to do.

Hey, Taylor, you got seven minutes. I want to talk to you about how content creation has played into your career and how it can apply to me in the job search, right? Message to higher major. Mr. Mrs. Higher manager, right? I see you work at XYZ company. I always want to work at XYZ company. Let's take NOS for example, right? NOS was going to be on this morning. She's an engineering manager at LinkedIn on the LinkedIn events page, right? If I was trying to network her NOS to get the LinkedIn, I'd be like, hey, NOS, I actually do a ton on LinkedIn and I actually do a lot of events.

I would love to pick your brain for seven minutes to be able to know how to leverage LinkedIn events more efficiently. NOS isn't on the call yet. We're going to catch up hopefully next week. I'm going to ask her that question more than likely she will say yes to that DM, right? So again, incredibly and incredibly important. Having nothing to offer is a myth, 100%. Others see things and oh, I love this. I love this so much. I love that. Yeah, again, while you don't think you can add value, you probably will. I will tell you this, the younger people in their careers, especially through recruiting on my team, have probably given me more value than to senior people.

Why? Because they look through things completely different. They look through the lens that is completely different than mine. For the love of everything, please don't pull a Gordon Ramsay. I can't borrow you for two seconds. Yeah, yeah, absolutely none of that. I so often use that at work. Hey, what's up? Can I still submits of your time chat? Hey, Elliot, how does that work out for you? Can you comment? How does that work out? Are people receptive to it? All that. Michael, it's great to see you. 0.8 to 12. Yeah, again, if you're laid off eight to 12 needs to be networking, why does it need to be networking?

Because these are the most active times on LinkedIn and Twitter. People are always on social first thing in the morning. Right? Incredibly important. Always start networking in the morning from the hours. So give yourself a break. Give yourself an hour break for lunch. 12 to one is lunch. One to five is studying specific things within tech. Now again, this is if you are self-paced on your own. If you are laid off from a job, your eight to 12 needs to be sending DMs and then the hours of one to five need to be phone calls or video calls with those people that respond back to you.

Right? Let me give you another example. I say it's all the time. What about buddies? He's been on the show before. Now he's at Netflix. He was in his dream job, was always to be at Netflix. So what he did is he started messaging Netflix managers on that worked in the specific type of business that he was doing at Evernote. I don't know the exact details. But this individual was messaging them like hey, listen, like, you know, I'm going to make this up. Right? Let's say he was really looking for, they're trying to implement messaging, right? Maybe it's Rabbit MQ, maybe it's whatever. They're trying to message an messaging tool within their tech stack.

What he did is he searched the word messaging. Again, this is made up on Netflix, on LinkedIn. He started to message managers that had the keywords messaging in their LinkedIn. And would say, hey, listen, I'm trying to implement a messaging software, you know, within our tech stack, do you have seven minutes? Do you have eight minutes? Low and behold, he got a job at Netflix because of sending these type of messages. It works, but it's just completely different than what we talk about. So, Elie, again, start out by going, I often use this to work. Hey, what's up? I still seven minutes your time to talk about the blocker on the X-work ticket.

Elie then comes in and goes, I often get a less than five minute time response if the person is showing the green. Yeah, so again, yeah. So, Elie, so you're saying they get back to you. I hope, hopefully that's what you're saying. Look for co-ops and internships for a couple of volunteers. Yeah, again, this is one of the biggest things. And I get this message. One of the reasons why I do this live show is to give back its scale, right? I can't talk to every single person who messes me. I wish I truly, truly wish I could. I truly wish I could, but I can't.

So I do these lives to share with people who messaged me. One of the, again, I get this question all the time. I, you know, I'm having problems. I'm down on my luck. I can't get anything going, right? You have to look right. Look for the internship. Look for the corporate, right? I listen, I'll give Jordan Ryerson shout out all day long, right? Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan reached out to me and goes, hey, listen, I'm trying to learn on my own. I'm trying to get experienced. Do you have any projects for me? Jordan, develop the unicornfinders.com. So if you go to the unicornfinders.com, how did Junior Developer build that?

And it was great. Jordan did a great job. You know, whenever we're having problems with spam accounts right now, so Jordan's looking to that. Again, but you can put that on his resume. People always need websites built. People need help. And even if they don't need help, people will listen to you if you advise them on something, right? Like, hey, tell us. And I see a big gap in your business here that I could develop this for you. I'll listen to you, right? So like, even if you're junior, you can still be a consultant, right? If you know it, so let's say, for example, let's say you are a chef.

There's one junior developer in mind and national who's a chef and now she got her first job in tech. So let's say you're a chef, right? And you know, you know the restaurant industry, right? Look, and I know the restaurant industry too. Let's say that you're a chef trying to turn software developer, you're trying to do it on your own. I would develop, I some sort of app to help chefs in the kitchen. I don't know what it is, but I would try to think of it. And I would try to develop it. And you know what I would do? I would literally go around talk to restaurants.

I would talk to mom and pop restaurants, maybe in strip malls, in your hometown. Hey, listen, like, I'm trying to develop this app to help chefs, I don't know, get the food out faster. It's a timer application, right? Again, all that matters. And then that's going to separate you tremendously as well. LinkedIn user comes in front, loading your content post from 6am to 8am helps give his ability folks you. Yes, again, absolutely. If you want to go to the content route, we talk about it all the time. This is a great opportunity as well. 6'6 to 8am. Yeah. Okay. So again, what Elliot says is that if he frames his message, the way I say it, specific amount of time, specific question, and sends it.

He usually gets a response within five minutes within his company. I did a three month unpaid internship in 1998 to move to tech. Again, makes sense. 20 year consultant for me very endorses your consulting point. Yeah. Like if you're a junior dev and I'm interviewing you or you're interviewing at a company and that company goes, hey, like, so what have you done, Elliot? And you say, hey, well, actually, I was a chef. And so I'm trying to get into the tech side of things. Why actually, I built an app to help chefs get their food out on time. Actually, two restaurants locally in my hometown are using the app and you can show them that.

Bruh. Bruh. Bruh. You're going to separate yourself tremendously, tremendously from the pack. Let's see, or DR to come in. I actually prefer to do tech consulting over work with one company. Yeah. I mean, again, right? Yeah, again, this is this is a whole other conversation. And I have a cell emmet. It's great to see you, man. Really, really great to see you. Are there any other questions? So again, how to break into tech? One, I would definitely go to boot camp route from a community perspective. If you're not going to go boot camp route because the financials are other life things. If you're doing self-paced, first part of your morning needs to be networking, second part of the day needs to be actually studying code.

I will tell you this networking. If I were to weigh it out, networking is more important in studying code. I get this question a lot. People are like LinkedIn activity or GitHub activity, LinkedIn activity. All the time. Right? Elliot comes in so much my networking on Twitter and LinkedIn was following feeds where people are offering Twitter spaces or conference chats. Yeah. And listen, I'm going to give a shout to Elliot here. Elliot is Elliot is a Elliot's another guy who eats his own dog food. He practices what he preach. He's always online. Elliot and I have had the opportunity to meet in person. But even before I met Elliot in person, I already felt like he was a friend because of how much he engaged in.

That is how powerful online networking can be. It's great to see you at Kevin. Yes, make sure your social is really the same message. Yeah, you can really leverage. So again, what I would do if I were you and somebody messaged me this the other day. And I'll end on this topic by the way. So if you have any more questions, please ask now if not, we're going to wrap up here in a few minutes. But for me, somebody asked me this the other day. They commented, actually it was last night, they commented about content creation. And this individual was like, well, like, who's, who's going to be?

who's going to care about my story? Who's going to care if I post content? Here's you deal. Everybody's fascinating with their story, right? Emmit. Like, I like, like, Emmit, like I am rooting for you from afar to find a job, right? Like, I know you're trying to find a job. I am rooting for you tremendously. Right? People follow along with other people's journeys, right? Well, throughout another name, Clark Sell. Clark Sell is trying to do trying to get some weight off of them, right? He's been posting on Twitter. He's been documented. I've been following along. I love it. People love to root for other people.

They just naturally do. And so if you're that person who is junior, and this is what I would do in the morning, I would network it in the afternoon. I would, I would study and build, and I would build in public. Hey, I just implemented react and I would post it on Twitter on LinkedIn. Hey, I just implemented react on the front end. This is brand new to me. Should I use hooks? Should I use react query? I don't know. I'm just making things up at this point, right? So again, like document, the more you talk about it, the more you're going to find your tribe, the more you find your tribe, the more people are going to come to you and potentially hire you.

Let's see here. Breaking any field to get in humble opinion, hanging around the barbershop, eventually everyone gets haircut. It's so good. Jonathan, is that you? I see some of you, somebody commenting. But yeah, it's so true. I love that a ton. Conference wins, conference always wins. I officially love Twitter space. I've been picking developers designers. No, yeah, I mean, again, so lives like this. So again, I say this all the time. If I were you and I were on the job search, I would DM every person who comments on this show says, Hey, I saw you on guidance, council 2, put know what love it connects.

He would see what's got going on. Right. So I have this and then I would go to unicorn finals. I would never never found it. Right. Hey, listen, you know, I'm a fan of Taylor. I saw you on unicorn finals with love to connect. Right. And he starts about this network. I love that. And I honestly, I love this, I love this comment again. Right. Yeah, John, that was great. Again, like, you know, hanging around the barbershop, eventually everyone gets a haircut. I love that so much. Just being around and being available helps so so much. D'Arte comes in. Everyone cares about a story, gives them some to care.

Right. You I love that so much. LinkedIn is necessary, but quite limited in regarding display personality. Good to have a personal website. Yeah, again, I understand this. So again, my marketing brain, LinkedIn is super top of the funnel. Right. Like no one, no one's going to find your personal profile unless you're active on LinkedIn. So again, something to look into as well. Oh, let's see here. Jonathan, this is the other every podcast, every person in career advice is, yes, 100%. Let's see here. It's great to see you, Ken Day dropping the inspiring developer on socials, dropping aspiring. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Right. Yeah, listen, I mean, if you're out there coding and deploying and your codes and get up and you can show it, you're not aspiring, you are doing it.

Whether you're getting paid or not, you are doing it. So take out the aspiring. I love that. Let's see here. David comes in and trying to break it and take them and getting good reaction to posting everything. Yeah, I imagine that. Right. Imagine that. Listen, people in tech love to give their opinions. Whether you like it or not, people in tech love to give their opinions. Love to give their opinions. And so if you can continue to document and post about what you're doing in your journey, people are going to comment and engage and you're going to build your own friend group. I promise you.

Yeah, no aspiring developer talk just makes stuff. And actually, you're a developer. I love that so much. All right, y'all. That's it for today. This was jam packed. I love it. They did not mean to go this long, but I'm glad y'all enjoyed it. Listen, go connect with people today. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with with your community. If you feel like somebody could benefit from this, please share. Nause, if you watch this now in the future, hopefully we can get you scheduled for next week. Tomorrow Stacey Smith, my dear friend Stacey Smith is going to be on Stacey is a senior staff engineer here locally, Nashville.

And he's a dear friend of mine. And we're going to just going to talk. We're just going to hang out. So that's tomorrow, Wednesday, Wednesday, it's going to be me and my team. So it's going to be Nate Walker and Joseph Joel, both of them are on my team, both are managers. So we're going to go live and we're just going to talk about recruiting and what we believe and what we stand for. So that's Wednesday. You get to you get to hear from my team a little bit. And then Thursday unicorn finders and then we will round out the day on Friday. So y'all have a great one.

I hope y'all have a wonderful Monday and we'll see you all tomorrow. 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 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, Taylor at vaco.com or at t-dasting on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.