guidance counselor 2.0 · episode 303
the funnel of networking (solo show)
key takeaways
- meet people at conferences or meetups, get them connected on your preferred social media channel
- post content regularly so people have a reason to engage with you over time
- comment on others' posts and respond to comments to make people feel seen and heard
- accept connection requests from people you don't know to expand opportunities for future engagement
- expect it to take months or a year of consistent engagement before you ask for something in your network
listen or watch
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about this episode
how to build a networking funnel by meeting people at events, connecting on social media, and engaging consistently over time before asking for anything
Just me myself and I this morning talking about how the funnel of networking should work!
Come hang with us! Like what you hear? Connect with me - Website: gun.io/taylor Email: taylordesseyn@gun.io LinkedIn: Taylor Desseyn Tweet me: @tdesseyn Pics of the life, wife, daughter & dog: @tdesseyn
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. Well, 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. 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, 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. What up, what up? It's good to see you all this morning. Happy, uh, um, Happy Thursday. It's good to see you all. It's good to see you all. We had a reschedule for unicorn finders. Um, and so I am, I am going live. So what's going on, y'all? Welcome. Good morning. Say, hey, we'd love to hear from you.
Just kind of give my thoughts on the power of networking. Um, for those of you who are tuning in, um, guidance counselor 2.0. Uh, this is a morning, uh, daily show that I do just to talk about the job search trying to help you. We'll give back to the community. Um, today it's just me. I usually have a guest on the show, um, but today I'm just talking about networking. How the funnel of networking should work. Actually, I came up with this idea this morning as I was, uh, as I was, um, uh, scheduling my tweets. I scheduled my tweets every morning and, and, and, um, and I, I was, I was talking about networking.
I was like, I want to do a thread. I was like, no, I don't have time to do a thread. I hate doing a thread. So you know what? I think that's to be my topic live because I still think people just like don't understand networking. Um, and that's fine. I get it. Um, it's kind of this overwhelming thing and people get weird about it. And they don't know how to do it. And so anyways, so we're going to talk about that today. But say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. Um, if you are tuning in, this is a networking event for those of you on TikTok, it's kind of hard to, kind of hard to network on this thing.
But if you jump on over to my LinkedIn and say, hey, uh, you can see everybody in common and you can network with others. So say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. Um, even had somebody comment yet this morning on yesterday's show. So again, people, people check this stuff. They just do now. I've been doing it long enough for people networking with others on the, on the show. so again, if you are watching, please say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. Um, and, uh, let's see here. What else? Had in the beer city code tomorrow. Really excited to speak twice at beer city code that's up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Never been to Michigan. Never been to Grand Rapids. So if you have any grand rapids suggestions, throw it in the chat. Um, we would definitely visit that. I get in a little bit early tomorrow before the conference starts. Um, what else join gun.io. If you have it, if you don't know about us, um, we are marketplace for engineers. So if your company needs hiring help, um, we actually have all of our engineers are technically vetted, which is, which is pretty cool. It's a pretty cool thing we offer. If you want to use us from a contracting consulting side of things, um, a developer that's got, gets placed on a project from gun.io has a mentor.
So that's really cool too. So we, we, we just don't throw our engineers on an island. Um, we actually guide them through the process with a mentor. So again, if you're interested in using gun to vet your engineers and place your engineers, I highly recommend it. Um, again, I've been a recruiter and then now on the other side of things in the engineering space. This is a really cool way to definitely a different way of doing things and the quality is going to get tremendous is tremendous. I'll just tell you that. Um, sweet. Want to give a shout out to, uh, let's see here that conference.
I see Clark cell. That conference is the official coffee sponsor of guidance counselor 2.0 Clark. As far as I'm aware of that conference is the only conference that has a show that this has a show. that has coffee beans. Um, and I'm a big coffee fan and it's really good. I promise they're not junk beans are really, really good. So check them out. Here's a code GC 2. Uh, the Austin code conference is coming up in, um, in January. The, uh, the keynotes for those of you who are wondering who the keynotes are in Austin. They've already announced it. Um, Danny Thompson for those of you who know Danny Thompson.
He is key noting that conference in Austin. It's going to be a lot of fun. Kelly Vaughn, my dear friend who's a director of engineer of Atlanta in Sean day Pearson who's a Netflix engineer out of Atlanta. So you're probably wondering like Taylor like these names sound familiar. Well, they've all been on my show. So, um, they're all amazing people. So, so highly recommend that commerce. Check it out in Austin. Uh, a lot of people tune in. Clark's good to see your brother. Um, RJ is great to see you. Chris Jordan, JC. Uh, Matt's good to see you. Um, so me. That's great to see you as well.
We're Berto. What's up, big dogs. Good to see you. It says, guess is so knowledgeable. Yep. There's no guess. So that's me. John's good to see you. NFL is technically back tonight. Football is back. So excited. Maria, it's good to see you. Scott Erica Eugene. Thank you so much for the kind words. Patrick, my guy. For those of you, Patrick is new to the content team. He's an incredible, incredible videographer. If you need work done for your business, hit up Patrick and winning productions. They are fantastic. Heather, it's good to see you, girl. For those of you who are looking for an amazing engineer architect who understands product marketing community.
Uh, hit up. She's looking. She's amazing. Richie. It's good to see your brother. Really, really, really good to see you. Um, all right. Cool. What's going? Dive in. I, again, I want to talk. Um, I want to talk networking, right. And, uh, yeah, who's doing a fantasy league? I'm, I'm open to doing a fantasy league. Becca was always done a fantasy league. Maybe I should do a fantasy league. Richie, maybe you and I should. Maybe you and I should run a fantasy league. I don't know. Yeah. We're going to see you. Um, yeah, not, not to pimp to hey, go ahead, pimp it out, Clark, pimp it out, brother.
I love it. Uh, yeah, use the code Texas early bird for $300 off your ticket. So basically free. Um, all right. So let's talk networking. All right. So a lot of people get weird about it. And it's kind of this like, people like, I want a network. I want a network and they're like, well, what do you want to, what do you want to network? And I'm like, um, you know, how do you do it? What is it? So networking for me. This is how I network. So I go to a meet up or conference. I don't really go to meet ups because it's not really many left in Nashville.
Um, so I go to a conference. So like beer city code or that conference last week, right? And, and, and, and Wisconsin. Um, I go to that event and I meet people, right? Um, so let's say you show up in a meet up and you sit with somebody to left or right of you. And you like chat with them. Hey, what's up? How you doing? First off, again, I just want to reiterate you don't need to have, you don't need to have like this huge long elevator pitch, right? I'm just going to tell her right now. You don't need this like long 30 minute elevator pitch.
I just want to go ahead and set that out there. Like literally. Like when it comes to networking, it's like, hey, like, I'm going to pull. Uh, Uh, you are too. It's good to see you. All right. So I'm going to use your take for for an example. Right. It's the next you are to go, hey, man. It's nice to meet you. My name's Taylor. What's your name? You are to go. Hey, I wish, I wish we could, I wish I could like pull video. Up here live so we can role play real time. And so basically it's like, hey, D R type. It's nice to meet you.
What do you do? He tells me what he does. It's like, great. That sounds good. D R. I asked me what I do. And I'm like, hey, this is what I do. It was great. And I'm like, hey, could we connect on LinkedIn? Right. I think the most important thing. I think this is where people really miss out on is getting people connected. Intalling is getting people into their social media platforms. Right. I think that's the most important thing. Um, is is really, really focus on getting people into the social media world. And or, or whatever your preferred method of choice. The thing is, and this one, I'm trying to get across when it comes to social media and networking is it's in your face.
Right. And when I say that it's like, who, who on, who on this chat like opens up their phone to their contact list and just scrolls through their contact list. Nobody. Right. What do we do? We open up our cell phones and we scroll through Instagram and we scroll through Twitter and we scroll through LinkedIn. Right. And you're probably like, well, Taylor, I don't use social media apps. I'm like, well, it's, it then this is really difficult to network at that point. You then that means you need to be going to more meetups and more conferences and more in person coffees and more in person lunches and try to get those people on an email list or something.
Cause again, networking is about scale. Right. But, but, but what what I want to say is this is that when you talk to somebody, get them into your preferred platformer choice, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, whatever. Cause what I do like again, if I was saying that with DR tape at, at a conference, I use, I, what I would ask him is like, hey, which platform do you use the most? What social media tool to use the most and do you take those Instagram? Right. Right. I'm going to come with you on Instagram. Right. If you are to say, Twitter, I'm going to come with you on Twitter.
If you're LinkedIn, right. So and so. And then they're immediately in my ecosystem. Right. It's about giving people in your ecosystem. Right. It's a quick handshake. Hey, how are you doing? Nice to meet you. Right. Christina. What do you do? Right. Can I connect with you? Get him in your social, get him in your ecosystem. Move on. And move on. And then what happens. And then what happens at the arts that come in LinkedIn or threads. Right. So then what I would do is I would get home. And you're, I'm going to start seeing DR tape posting consistently. Right. This is why it's important to post.
Right. This again, I'm kind of explain this like full circle here to get it through y'all skulls because some of y'all just just just. just can't figure it out. Right. What happens is the reason why I tell people to produce content is because so if the RTA and I connect at a conference. And then I connect with him on LinkedIn like he said his preferred platform is LinkedIn. And then he's he continually starts posting on LinkedIn. I'm going to have a reason to engage with him. And so after six months to a year of continually engaging. I could ask him for something he could ask me for something.
Now you're probably Taylor again. I don't use social media. Listen, I understand you don't use social media. So then how are you networking? Like to me, like if you're not using social media and you're not at a coffee or lunch. or a meet up or conference like if you're not, if you don't use social media network. Like you need, you need to be hustling every day coffees, lunches every single day because I will tell you this. That is what I did the first nine, eight years of my career at make out when I was when I was recruiting at make out. It was a coffee.
I was meeting three to four people a day. Right. You're naturally people are going to remember you with that clip. But at the end of the day, I switched everything over to social. And it's made so it's made it so much easier because it's at scale. Right. So I connect with all you and like I connect with you all. And if y'all keep posting, I'll keep engaging. And then it's constant constant networking. So I'll make it to some comments here. If you have comments, questions, please throw them up there. Let's see here. Christine, it's good to see you. Engineer spend so much time coding alone and naturally create social.
I know, hey, and I get this, right? I get this, but here's what's so awesome about posting on social media is that there's no social anxiety. Because I get it. Marie, I'm, I'm terrified networking. Right. Like conferences. Like that conference last week. Like Clark Carkin and test students, I get overwhelmed. Like I get overwhelmed. I'm, I'm, I'm gonna go back to my room. Right. So again, I understand that's what, that's why, that's why social media is so incredibly important. Let's see here. Steven, it's good to see you. The art that comes in. You have to know how to play the game and to network in the social media where which means that your network circle.
Make sure you're a bill of network. Yeah. So this is another thing. Right. We've talked about this. I've talked about this with LinkedIn strategy. Right. There's LinkedIn strategy. People are like, do I accept everybody? Do I accept the only people I know? It depends what you want to do. If you want to really tight niche, you know everybody in your circle. And you don't want to meet necessarily new people. Then I wouldn't accept people that you don't know. But for me, I'm trying to cast as wide as net as possible. So if you connect with me, and I don't know you, I'm gonna accept you because you may still post something and I may comment.
And then it causes a conversation. You see how, you see how that makes sense again. In my opinion, I don't think you should be selected when it comes to your LinkedIn. I think you should connect with everybody except everybody because that's more of an opportunity for you engage on one of their posts in the future. Thus potentially a new relationship. Let's see your air. It's good to see you. Kale is good to see you as well. Dominik's good to see you. Jordan comes in here. I've noticed a lot of networking is just showing up and the rest is making people feel seen. I love this.
Best networkers I've seen out there on here often go back to their comment section respond to everybody even to the cohorts. Yeah. I mean, so that's what I do. Right. I mean, for those of you, I mean, I'm gonna comment on everybody's comments after the show. Right. And I think it's so incredibly important. People want to feel heard. People want to feel seen. If you are networking, I would try to stay off your phone when someone's talking to you, like being engaged even if it's for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, and then move on. But I think it's so true. Like all of y'all commenting and that this is why I encourage commenting in the chats because I want to get to know you every single time that you comment in the chat.
It's another time for me to see your name and me to get connected with you. Right. So again, incredibly important. Alan, it's good to see you. It's great to see you. Let's see here. The article comes in here and goes post repost share information that you found an internet caters to your learning journey. Love this again. You're like, what do I post? I don't know things you're learning about. It doesn't have to be from you. Just post an article repost this live after this and just say, hey, I learned about networking today. It works. Right. Ricci comes in hot tip hot tip hot take more hot take hot tip for in person marketing that you may know create a QR business card and put as you display on your phone at least there's the absolute 100%.
I do the same thing. It's so much easier on LinkedIn. If you open up the mobile app and go to the search feature. There's like a QR code bar in the search feature. You can save that. Amelia, go to LinkedIn. Yep, 100% such a game chain. Then it's not awkward. Right. Hey, keep pull out your phone. Hey, what's your number? It's just awkward. And then again, right. If you plug in somebody's number, you're going to forget about them. You're going to forget about them. Let's see here. It's about stating top of mind. Absolutely. Danny Thompson knew who I was when I met him for the first time.
There you go. Right. Danny knows time of people. Everybody, everybody engages with Danny. Right. And so again, it's so important. I'm having three to four coffee chats a day at work, whether it's peers again. The Rt brings up a great point. I started a new position. You got to network. You got to be present right before right before I jumped on this. I actually we had a we had a morning coffee session for gun dot ai. We were just all hanging out. We talked about wine and restaurants and just kind of bullshit. It was great. You get to know your people. It's incredibly important. Let's see here.
I love that a tool called Papa to manage all that. I love that. Good morning. Joe. It's good to see from Knox without gauging on social media. You are drastically limited your reach. You're really wanting to network. You're all tools 100% again. I understand if you do not use social media. But I think I think to be truly effective in today's world you have to. Another tip. If you don't like it schedule a short social media block. Do it and get off. Yeah. Love this. If you don't like social media. Just schedule time to be on it for a little bit and then get off of it.
I think it's great. Let's see here Christina comes in and say my network. Harding groups are on stage of conferences and I go tuck in for a nap to process all this. Yeah. Same same same. 100%. Let's see here. Yeah. Just posting that my contract ended led to multiple job interviews and messages of people in my networking. Let me know about opportunities. Again, tree falls in the woods. No one's around. Does it actually fall? Obviously it does. But again, this is this is the thing you have to be vocal. Right. Like you don't understand like. Like I don't know about y'all when y'all travel. I don't watch TV anymore.
So like last week at that conference. I did not turn on a TV the entire time I was there. I was on my phone. I was on TikTok. I was on Instagram. I was on Twitter. I was on LinkedIn. Right. I don't know about y'all. But we just I just live on my phone. Right. And so use it. Leverage it. Right. Leverage it. Yeah. You can always block or move people. Roberto. So true as an introvert social media. It's a game changer. I do face to face networking. But as you said, yeah again, remember, Roberto, like I want to give a shot at like I'm seeing you on here.
Yeah. Right. It's good to see you. I mean, Roberto and I were were actually in dot net user group. We were co leaders. He was a president. I was a VP back in what 2014 2015. Right. And here he is like eight years later. Like still on my feet still commented. I mean, it works. Right. And it's just good to see Roberto again. Because I just want time to get into town and Roberto is out here commenting. And it feels like I'm still hanging out with Roberto, even though I'm not right. Again, that's the important part of it. Let's see here. It is important for engineers to stay engaged and code every day.
Yep. Absolutely. Connect with everybody. Yeah. Have a photo. Please have a photo. Yeah. Make a profile picture. Let's see here. I'm posting. Let's see here. For me, networking is a loaded term. It organically develops through if you generally share and promote. Yeah. Yeah. Again. Right. I don't listen. A lot of people force networking and I get it. Right. That's what that's why I want to say today. It's like go to a conference, go to a meetup, accept other LinkedIn invites. Get them. Get them in your ecosystem. Engage like comment for a while. I mean, I mean, a while. Right. Three, six months. And then if you need something slide into the DMs.
Right. Or if you want to have a conversation slide into the DMs and then ask something you can't see, but like ask something is like way down here. Right. So it's just this funnel. It's this funnel. Right. Get them in your ecosystem. Engage with them on social. Send them a DM to maybe do a coffee. Do a virtual coffee and then ask. Right. Fun. Let's see here. Trisha comes in. If you aren't sure where to start, start by commenting on other people's content. Love it. Great tip by Trisha. Yeah. Just comment. It is. Comment on social media is the quote when you weren't up to somebody to meet up and just shake in their hands and like, hey, it was nice to meet you.
Right. Let's see here. You can think about as a game if you need to. Every time you post content, you get 10 points. Every time you comment, you get one point. Oh, I like that. I like that. Yeah. 100%. I wonder what my point value would be at this point. Let's see here. Here comes in. I was doing videos and getting a ton of interactions, having quit doing them and trying to come up better idea. Do some humorous posts to grab a laugh and attention. Professionals. Great. But you don't have to limit yourself. Yeah. So I will. I will tell you this much. I was talking to talk to a bunch of people lately about the fact that sometimes talking about non professional stuff can actually develop, develop relationships and just good will in general faster than actually talking about work stuff.
Now, I'm not saying LinkedIn needs to be Facebook with the content you put out. But you know, I mentioned about watching the bear on Hulu in my vlogs. Right. Because I want to know if people like it or all that stuff. So, so all that being said again, you can talk about non work stuff and but just don't make it. You know, Facebook, I guess I can say. I don't really lose nothing to say with someone. Yeah, 100% 100% let's see here. Give give give ask 100% let's see here. Cool. Your point. I'll be asking. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, I think that's it. Is it may have a sending comments questions or concerns.
If not again, just wanted to talk today about networking again. Again, I always kind of do these talks right before I head to a conference because it's top of mind. Just get people in your network. Scott comes in here. I've been posting almost every day about my present personal project for close to two weeks. While it's hard for me to not dive into my metrics and judge myself a lack of engagement. Yeah. Here's the deal. Yeah. To back what Scott said. The fact of the matter is is all right. So here's a prime example Scott ready. I've been doing my vlog now for a year.
It popped up anybody use time hop anybody use time hop time hop is the app where like it tells you what you posted a year ago two years ago, three years ago, four years ago. Yeah. Anyways, so it just popped up like two weeks ago that I started my vlog journey. Right. I will tell you this much. It has been a year and people are just now like like DM me like hey, I love your vlogs all this stuff and I've changed mine a lot. So again, it takes so much time. Scott, don't worry about the metrics. Listen, once you start your content journey and start posting.
Nothing's going to. No one's going to care for about six months. I don't mean that to be mean. But use that to your advantage. If no one cares, just keep posting and just figure out your cadence and your wording and all that stuff. Let's see here. I've been known to make some. Yeah, honestly, honestly, I think. Yeah, I love what Richie does. I'm not just saying that because he's commenting. I'm saying because I really do like it. He's funny. He's witty. He makes fun of the recruiting industry, but he also post really meaningful stuff. So highly recommend connected with Richie. Just watch with he does.
Did you watch both seasons? I'm on the second season. I just finished episode six with a yellow lot. That was that was just a lot of anxiety episode six. The Christmas dinner. Whoa. Nope. Let's see here. More again. It's good to see you. Yeah. Always try to like comic post. It takes about 18 months to market yourself 100%. Yeah, exactly. Like for me, like I worked out the kinks. I mean, the last year from my vlog is worked out the kinks. I'm just now probably where I kind of wanted after a year. Cool. All right. Sweet. Yeah. Well, that's it for today. I appreciate your comment.
I appreciate you all hanging out with me. I appreciate it. A ton. I appreciate you a ton. I appreciate you a lot. I appreciate you all time. No lives tomorrow. I'll be in Michigan. And then I'll be coming back Sunday. So we'll be back. I got a next week's crazy with guests. Let's see here. We got who we got next week. We got so David G. David G is head of our dev world at gun.io. He is coming on Monday. We're going to talk about how how we connect with engineers tech out engineers. You know, treat engineers on our platform Tuesday. For those of you who know Demetrius Clark.
He is head developer advocate at Clark. He's coming on Tuesday. Wednesday. I have Homer gains on the show down at Atlanta. For those of you who don't know home or home or his accessibility engineer. He's fantastic love and death. And then yeah. So busy, busy week next week. So y'all have a good one. Appreciate y'all ton as always. Y'all go connect with everybody in the comments. 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 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 at T-Dasting on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.