networking strategy (solo show)

full transcript

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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 in touch with 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. Alrighty, what's going everybody? Good morning. Good morning. Happy Monday. It's great to be with you all this morning. Just me today. We are going live with my boy Brandon. Brandon tomorrow. Sorry. Brandon. Brandon. I'm excited. But no, happy Monday. We're back. So only two lives this week though.

Only two lives because I'm heading out to react Miami, shout out Michelle and Gabe and G2I putting on such an amazing conference. But I'll be out react Miami starting Wednesday. So we have the live today live tomorrow. And then I'll be off for the week and actually I'm speaking Omaha on Monday and Tuesday. So I'll be out. So no guidance counselor 2.0 for a week starting Wednesday. So excited to be with y'all today. Please say hey, would love to hear from you. Again, I love going solo. I love interviewing guests but I love solo because it's a little bit more Q&A, a little bit more engagement from you all because I don't have a guest to kind of get through the interview with.

So if you have any questions, please, please, please throw it up. Would love to hear from you. Also again, continue to say hey, engage, right? The reason why I tell people that this is a networking platform. This is a meet up. This right here. This is a meet up. All I want you to do is say hey. So literally, if I told you, you can go to a meet up and make friends and all you have to do is show up and say hey and leave. This is it. If I like, well Taylor, how does that work? Well, at the end of the day, people, there are a lot of people and I encourage all of the people who comment to engage with other people, right?

So here's what I would do and this kind of goes into my talk today. But what I would do is what I've realized is that I want to be able to provide you the networking reach an opportunity that I wish I had when I was kind of coming up. So what does that mean? Is that I have created these ecosystems is what I call an ecosystems. Ecosystems where you can network, right? So guidance counselor 2.0 is the ecosystem. So if I were you, I wouldn't go back and connect with every single guest I've had on the show for the last three years. I've been doing this for three years.

I've had, I think I think all my podcasts on Spotify, there's 250 episodes. I probably had around 250 guests or at least 200 guests, right? So I'm connect with those guests. Then you have unicorn finders, which is my other endeavor. You can go check it out and link them. The unicorn finders just plug it in. It'll pop up at the page. And what I would do is I would go through and I would network with every single founder that we've had on that show. Because what I've realized is that I want to create an ecosystem for everybody to network and so, but I will tell you this.

If you comment on this show, people will network with you. There are a lot of people who go through the comments, who connect, who network. So we're kind of this like we're kind of this hangout session, right? So that's why I tell people to comment to engage. Also ask questions, right? This is a live show. I do this for reasons who you could learn something, right? It's not just me like blowing hot air the entire time. Like I want to answer your questions. And so if you have questions around the job search or networking, please ask them now. That's where I'm going to dive into today for a few minutes.

And shorter show, so a show is shorter show. But we're still going to get to some good stuff. Also, if you got a promotion recently or a raise or title change or something, I want to celebrate you. So please start up in the chat. If you feel weird celebrating yourself, please don't. I want to celebrate you. I feel like again, we as human beings were always on to the next thing, right? Hey, I got a promotion. Where's my next promotion? Hey, I got a raise. Oh, it was only 3% or oh, it was only 5%. Right? Like, let's celebrate you. But if you feel weird, but you want to celebrate somebody else, please throw it up.

Because I want to celebrate you and others. Also, want to give a shout to that conference. I see Clark in the comments. Clark's good to see you want to give a shout to my coffee sponsor. That conference. You're probably like, Taylor, you're saying there's a conference that has a coffee? Yes, it's actually really good. So I would highly check it out. But also, check out that conference. I'm key noting, I'm very blessed that Clark chose me the keynote in July through Wisconsin conference. I would be there. Go check it out. But also, bare minimum, just go buy some coffee because it's really, really good. I'm waiting for Clark to drop a decaf roast.

Clark, decaf. But otherwise, I think I'm drinking sassy syntax this morning. It's really, really delicious. All right. I want to give a shout to people tuning in. Alex, Fritz is great. See you. Clark, again. It's good to see you, buddy. It's wonderful. See you, Will. Chris, John, Becky. It's great to see you, Val. It's great to see you. Oh, man, we got a lot of people this morning, Victoria, Fritz, and it's awesome. All right, cool. What's going to dive in with Fritz's first question again. If you have a question about the job, please ask TikTok. It's great to see you all this morning. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter.

It's great to see you all this morning. So how do you feel about third party assistance to the job search and interview assistance? I want to know your perspective is a good one. Fritz, can you expound on third party assistance? I mean, are you just saying using a coach or something? If you're saying using a coach, I mean, I recommend it. You know, I do offer those services. I don't talk about it a lot, but that is an option. Listen, I think I listen, I think it's worth it. If you have the money, I would recommend it. I know a lot of people have found success, but there's a lot of snake oil salesmen and women out there.

So I would really like look them up and do some research. But I would recommend, I definitely would recommend using a third party assistance interview assistance. I just, people can't do this a lot, right? That's why I go live. Like I try to give back as much information as I can so you can take it. But I know a lot of people just need the one-on-one accountability. So again, I offer it if you want to use it, I would highly, highly recommend doing that as well. How much can attending conferences boost opportunities with jobs? So I will tell you this, I think conferences and again, I want to give a plug to Clark Cell with that conference.

I do want to give a shout to render ATL. I'll be there as host next month. To be honest with you, there's a lot of tech conferences out there. I think that conference in render ATL, a minimum Cincinnati, Michael Richardson does a great job. All things open and Raleigh have not been accepted yet. If anybody knows people, all things open, I would love to be there this year. But yeah, I think it's great Alex. I really do. I think not enough people, I'm going to talk about conferences because I'm heading down to react Miami on Wednesday. But like when it comes to this stuff, like I think it's everything.

I really truly do what's everything. I think you can absolutely find job opportunities. You can connect with some amazing people. I've met some amazing people. Yeah, I would highly highly recommend it. This guy, D calf. All right, good. My man, I love it. DevOps engineer. I love that. That's great to see you. Cool. All right. So I want to talk about networking. You're like, Taylor, you talk about the shit all the time. And I do. I really, really do because here's why. All of y'all are really, really bad at it. Right now, the ones that are here engaging, this is the first step to networking.

But I was listening to a podcast the other day. It was actually Gary Vaynerchuk. And Gary Vaynerchuk was actually talking about college kids. It was one of his recent interviews. And literally what it was actually he was speaking. So Gary Vaynerchuk was speaking to his interns and his new employees at a college. And they asked them. I forgot the actual question, but they basically asked Gary Vay. If you have a piece of advice for us, what would it be? As interns, as new college grad students, what would your piece of advice be? And you know what he said? He said, get out your phone and connect with every single person on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever, and consistently engage with them moving forward.

And it was so awesome to hear him say that. And again, a lot of the stuff I say is just Gary V. Repackers to the job search. But the reason why I was so good to hear that is because it made me not feel crazy. In a sense of, hey, listen, like at the end of the day, connect with people, like just engage with people. And what he said, he says, find a common denominator. That's what he said. Gary Vaynerchuk, find a common denominator. And that's what networking is. And that's what this show is. That's why I tell people to network. Your common denominator is this show.

Like Chris could message Clark, be like, hey, Clark, saw you on Taylor's show. And then immediately there's a connection there. So it was really, really cool to hear that. So again, I would encourage you, you're like, how do I network? How do I engage? I want to give a shout out to Allison here. Allison makes cakes. I follow Allison on Instagram. I want to eat everything she posts. And I comment all the time, right? We find food. That's our mutual interest, right? So again, that's how you network. That's how you do it. I want to get to another question here. I want to get to questions first, instead of me running my mouth, do recruiters try the apps, listen on portfolios and resumes.

How many interactive apps? No, recruiters don't know what we're looking at. We don't click what all we care about is what's in the body of your resume. So again, highly recommend, just focus on that. I would have all of your like GitHub and portfolio and all that maybe like in your cover letter or something that you can hand like that that you can pass over. But like again, we don't really care. All we want to know is what's in your resume. We don't look at links any of that stuff. What else? Got a great question. Taylor Dessom, what might be wrong to someone with skills who keeps applying and applying for jobs?

So again, I will tell you this. The problem is is that there's, there's so many applicants out there. You're not doing anything wrong. The problem is is your resume is not being seen. One of one of my dear friends who's a director of engineering, she screenshotted me after 24 hours, 300 senior developer applicants for one job. If you're applying, if you're applying your resume, you're going to be more behind. You're not doing anything wrong. There's just more people out there. So you've got to do something different and that's showing up to this live show. That's engaging with people. That's commenting. That's networking. It's all of that stuff that's going to hit you to the top.

Because here's the deal. If you message me moving forward, if I have an open job that we could work together on and you see me posted or talk about it, don't apply DM me. Hey, Taylor, I saw where you posted this job. Can we talk, right? That's going to make a difference. That's going to make a difference. Let's see here. What else? Erica, it's great. So you Joe's great. See you, Danny. A group I'm part of is doing a free network on how to network. So many people are intimidated by networking person. Again, not having live events network. So Danny, I love this. My biggest thing, so I'm going to react to my AME on Wednesday.

I think networking is really important at conferences. Here's you. I want to give you all permission, especially if you go to any meetups or networking events, moving forward or conferences. You don't have to have a huge elevator pitch. I had one individual coming to me and goes, hey, I'm trying to work up basically a script for a 30 minute conversation. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No one wants to talk to you for 30 minutes. No one. I don't. I love you. I don't want to talk to you for 30 minutes. Five minutes. Hey Taylor, what do you do? I'm a recruiter. Great.

Do you like it? Yeah, I like it. What do you do? I'm a developer. What are you developing Java? What company do you work for? An e-com company? Do you like it? Yeah, cool. All right. What's your LinkedIn? Great. We're connected. Move on. It's not. Again, people put way too much pressure on themselves and networking. Way too much pressure. All networking is, hey, Danny, nice to meet you. My name's Taylor. Hey, I'm Danny. What do you do? Great. Great. What's your favorite color? Great. Awesome. And I'm going to be checking out the fact that LinkedIn, the thing is you got to connect right now. You got to connect right now.

People are reacting to Miami. I'm going to be chasing everybody's ass at React Miami. Please connect. Please connect. Please connect. You got to do it then and there. Allison, of course. Let's see here. Do recruiters give importance to cover letters, especially when they're optional upload. No. Because recruiters are your cover letters. Right? Your recruiters are your cover letters. And we speak for you. So that's why you need to take time to meet with us. Talk to us. Engage with us. Sell yourself to us. Because we are basically your actual like in-person cover letters. If that makes sense. Quazie, it's great to see you this morning.

Need to reach out to current employees that comes with you. So, all right. If you don't follow me on TikTok, I posted something the other day that went to semi-viral with a lot of hate comments about this. Here's the deal. Like, listen, I know so many people are like, hey, Taylor, I saw a Beiko posting. Right? I'll try to help you. And the worst thing to say is, hey, you need to apply. But I would always reach out to people. Like the arguments like, oh, you're going to annoy people or people are not going to have time to talk to you. Listen, I know more people that have found jobs because they've networked in DM, just somebody at that company.

Again, my buddy who worked at Evernote was at Evernote for three months, always wanted to work in Netflix, started messaging Netflix hiring managers that were basically in the same business as what he was doing at Evernote, says, hey, how do you solve this problem? And manager got back to him after 10 other conversations he now works at Netflix. Right? I see it more times than not. I would highly recommend always reach out to people as well. Let's see here. Oh, I don't even want. Yeah, again, no one wants to talk for more than 30 minutes. Like if I saw John the hard, John, what's up, dude?

You doing good? Yeah, I'm doing good. How you doing? Great. Cool. All right. Let's stay in touch. I mean, that may be a little bit of guy vibe, but also, again, people don't, I mean, you don't have to sit down with people and have an intense conversation. That comes in again, Clark, that conference. So many people just don't take the step. People show up to a conference and never reach out to others or ask to be introduced. People like me would love to help you find folks, cover step. So many people just want to help. Yeah, I mean, listen, I will tell you this, the people at conferences specifically have a very different mindset than most people at meetups.

Most people at meetups in your city just want to show up, eat some free food, maybe learn something and go home. People at conferences, they've taken the flight, they've taken the hotel, they are there, they are invested. In my opinion, like if you go to that conference in Wisconsin, Clark is hopefully shooting for a thousand people he said, give or take. I would connect with every single person, a thousand people, you're like, Taylor, that's going to take forever. Yeah, conferences should be work. You should be worn out. If you are not worn out by the end of a conference, you did it wrong just to be totally on it.

That may be a hot take and I don't care. If like I have two conferences back to back this week, react Miami and then connect to the hot and Omaha Nebraska, I've never been in an Nebraska before. I'm excited to eat some steak, right? But I'm going to be worn the F out and that's okay because you should be milking every drop during a conference but also take care of yourself, right? Like for me, I'm up at eight or I'm out the door networking at eight a.m. and I'm in bed by eight p.m. at conferences, right? Miami may be a little different. But again, you got to pace yourself but you should be worn out at conferences but you have a captivated audience at conferences.

Once you hear, Chris comes in too many think the goal of networking is to sell something. Yeah, listen, don't sell me anything. And again, I don't go around and say, hey Chris, I'm a recruiter. Can you work with me? No, I'm like, yo, Chris, what's up? What do you do? And Chris is like, what do you do? And I was like, oh, recruiter? He goes, what? I go, I'm a recruiter. Right? I don't sell it. Just hang out. Be friends. I think the art of just friendship is lost. People are trying to push it all the time. Just hang. Just vibe. Have a drink with somebody.

If you don't drink, eat something with somebody. Have coffee. If you hate coffee, go drink some soda water somewhere with somebody. That's all it is. It's all it is. Just be friends. Let's see her to call. If you're hitting big car, say a business car to scalable code to your LinkedIn, don't be the person they want to connect with. Yes, few tips here. Dot card is good. I have one. It's not next to me. Dot card DOT card is good. Another thing, just download the QR code of your LinkedIn as the background of your phone. The way you get there is if you go to the search bar on your cell, on your mobile app, on LinkedIn, there's a QR code.

Click on it. It pops up. Screen shot. It saves us a background of your phone. You have nothing to lose by. I mean, I mean, nothing. I mean, nothing. Right? You have nothing to lose. And I've taken that into my career. It has opened up doors and I've never thought would have opened. Just ask. Just ask. Let's see here. I love it. Danny's open and connecting 30 minutes. Yeah, again, no one's got time to talk 30 minutes. Best comments. Bridget comes in. What's up, Bridget? Best comments I've gone to for network was women impacting tech. Lots of people similar backgrounds. I love that. They strongly encourage networking.

I love that so much. Love, love, love. Awesome. Let's see here. What else? Ashton, what's up? If you aren't exhausted, Ashton's a former speaker of the show. Two time speaker of the show. If you aren't exhausted, and the comments you did wrong. Yes, Ashton will be at render. I will be at render. Ashton was just down at South by. down in Austin. But yeah, again, Ashton, Ashton gets it. Let's see here. This is good advice. Yes, this is good advice. Tia, which conference are you going to? That's awesome. Next thing, conference, all right, conference etiquette. Again, real fast, we're going to knock it out. And then we're going to go on with our day because I'm about to.

I'm about to there. Look at this. Great advice. I'm actually going to that conference in Wisconsin. Clark, look at that. I love it, Mark. You're really going to like it. Clark is not paying me to say this. I actually mean it. He just gives me coffee. But I really do mean it. The final thing that I want to talk about, conference etiquette real fast. So be present, be engaged. Ask good questions. Try to meet with as many people as possible. Let's see here. Here, pro tip from Clark, if you're going to network, realize someone like me might need 100 new people in exchange context. It's OK.

Yeah, yeah. So Clark brings up a really good point. So going to a conference and networking is like, the first part, right? The follow up after the conference is probably the most important part. Make sure that you're like falling up with people. Hey, Taylor, just want to follow up. We met at that conference and we met at render. We love to connect. Let's chat. Right. Again, please do that. Follow up. Like I'm going to tell you that somebody tweeted this the other day. I wish I remember who tweeted it because it was such good advice. But like the key to everybody's success in general, in my opinion, this is my opinion, being a good recruiter, being a good husband, being a good friend, being anything is follow up.

Is follow up. Like I don't know about y'all. Again, I'm going to go back to Allison with her cake business. If Allison wants to sell cakes, right? And there's people who are interested in buying her stuff. And they don't get back to Allison. Allison's probably going to follow up. The follow up is where the magic happens. Folks, the follow up is where the magic happens. Just because you get the information doesn't mean anything. Well, it means a lot of things. I don't mean discount it. But the follow up, the follow up, is incredibly, incredibly important. What else? Let's see our conference etiquette. I love it.

Yeah, if anybody has conference etiquette, please throw it up because we're going to end soon. My daughter's finishing up breakfast. I see her right now. She's losing her mind. So if you have conference etiquette, please throw it up. Carver say, always have multiple ways to connect ready on the moment. NFC, travel business cards are great. Yeah, 100% totally agree. Make sure it's just available. Pen paper, get a phone number or something. But get them in your ecosystem. Get them in your ecosystem. Let's see here. Take notes on your phone. Oh, yeah. So I'm going to bring this up. This wasn't where Nicole was going, but I do want to bring this up.

Basically, the best way to network with people. So I'm going to end here. I'm going to end here. I'm going to end here. TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. I'm going to end right here. Because I got to go. The best, my best pro tip. Create content for other people. When you go to conferences, instead of writing down notes that you're going to keep live tweet, everybody's talking, tag them, you will immediately be able to go up to that speaker afterwards. They're going to get off stage. Like we all do all speakers do. They get off stage and check their Twitter immediately or check their Instagram, or check their LinkedIn for people posting them, tagging them.

If you create content and you summarize people's talks and you retweet it, they're going to retweet it. And you're going to become known to them. So like react to Miami this week, like I'll probably create some content for some speakers. Like they love that. The best way to give back is just create content. If you came to my talk at that conference in Austin and you retweeted the entire talk with some main bullet points, I'm going to retweet you. And you're immediately going to have top access in my DMs. You see how that works? Give, give, give, give, give, then ask. If you're out here live tweeting my talk and summarizing and creating content for me, you can have whatever you want pretty much in the DMs.

So anyways, all right, that's enough of me ramble today. Hope you all enjoyed this. There's a lot more we can cover. I'll try to go live in Miami once for my hotel room. Just hang out with y'all because I just love this community so much. Also, if you have not joined our Discord yet, me and my team have a Discord, I'm going to throw it up. Actually, I can't throw it up right now. I'll throw it up in the comments after this. If you're not a part of my team's Discord, please join me over 300 developers and IT folks in it. We'd love for you to be a part of it.

Just try to help people, right? We post jobs. We post job tips. All of it. We'd love to have you a part of it. Please go connect with people today. If this episode resonated with you, please share it. I would love, basically for this, the blessed someone else's timeline so that they can help them. And I'll see you tomorrow. Brayden, who I met at that conference in Austin is coming on the show. Brayden told me he submitted 800 applications before he found the job. So we're going to talk about that. But hopefully you'll have a great Monday. See y'all tomorrow. Peace. Hey, you did it.

You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause 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, tailoratvaco.com or at T-DESS and on all social media handles.

And I hope you have a fantastic day.