career switching and job search 101 w/ account manager, jordyn wallace

full transcript

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

alrighty morning everybody no no one's here yet no one's here Leon how's your morning going man where you at you're in the office n this is my virtual background are you serious that is awesome I join I join meetings people do this yeah they stare the guy in the background until he Loops uh do you have do you have it to where you serve yourself coffee have you seen those I've seen those before no I I just have a lot of different stuff for my students like uh when I need my students to lock in we get the Minecraft background going you know get the

hyper Focus so that they can listen to every word I'm saying and so I've seen the coffee one but uh I normally roll with the uh the the office that's awesome that's awesome well good morning everybody morning Mohamed good morning good morning it's good to see you so um y'all say hey we'd love to hear from you I want to get right into it today y'all know drill please say hey this is a networking platform Leon's big on this as well um I I I really just want y'all to connect with everybody right um I've been doing this for five years this year um and

Leon's the first so it took me five years to get Leon but but happy he's here um we met at commit your code um Leon obviously you know want to give you your flowers been a big fan of you for a long time and what you're doing what you're building it's very special um it's very hard to do um and so uh again what what you're doing and what you've done is amazing so um props to you um everybody please connect with Leon I know y'all obviously probably know him um but please connect with him if you have not and then y'all connect with each

other in chat want to give through announcements real real fast shout out to aight I'm an aight hero Jason Tores is aight hero um uh they're doing some great stuff go check them out um and we got some of the app right Heroes coming on the show here soon so excited to talk about what app's doing more in detail um uh also check out our community site we got a lot going on in the commity Jason's doing a lot of heading up um and we've just kind of relaunched kind of our job search community on the Discord a lot of how to guides how to

interview how to write a resume really trying to just get back on my content over the last four years if you want to get updated on when I go live please text uh text me this is actually my number this is it comes to me it's not AI it's not automated um it's kind of like my workline as I say so text that um and uh again everybody tuning in Richard Roxy Jason EMT Mark Ricardo JC uh Chris um it's great to see y'all this morning m r what's going on big dog uh let's see here yeah so we got the crew this morning Devon

from Dallas I love it Chris from Nashville cool all right Le I know people I know a lot of people know who you are but talk about what you've built with the 100 devs resilient coders and then and then I'll dive in kind of peppering you with some questions yeah sure so uh resilient coders we're based out of Boston and Philly we trained exceptional black and brown talent to be software Engineers we've helped hundreds of folks go from um kind of minimum wage no degree into high growth high growth careers as software Engineers uh with 100 Dez I had been running programs like resilient coders

that were smaller um more selective pandemic hit I wanted it to be helpful I'm not a doctor could what what could I do right and so I decided to launch a program that help folks learn how to code and we started off with just uh a handful of folks I thought it'd be me and three people online but I decided to put it on Twitch uh we did a pilot version of it that went really well we' have like 300 plus people that would join every single class and then for our second cohort it kind of really exploded we'd have thousands of people that would

join for each class and that's morphed into hundreds and hundreds if not at this point thousands of people that have gotten jobs as software engineers 70,000 plus strong on Discord our most recent class also sponsored by aight shout out aight we had about 2,000 concurrent live folks in that class about 880,000 unique viewers uh so we we just try to make a place for folks that are learning uh that want to learn how to code that want to learn how to get a job we we're more a jobs program than we are a coding program a space where they can learn be comfortable uh and

grow yeah I love that and there's been a lot of intersection too with 100 devs and torque which is been awesome yeah of course which I'm I'm super pumped about so all right man I I I know so I know you I know you have a great podcast with Danny um I know we all kind of talk about the same stuff but I definitely obviously you know again want to talk to you about what's going on what are you seeing in the market where do you think people are struggling um and and uh yeah let's just go ahead and start there where where do you

think people are really missing the mark right now yeah I I think I think one it's the belief right now I think the biggest thing I see holding folks back is the negativity right now of course we know the market is the market right but people are using that as a as a mechanism to stop taking action and so and I I just see that at scale and it's unfortunate and I understand why because you you find yourself in this bubble you're not in the torque Community you're not in the 100 devs Community you don't have that positivity coming in that shows you if you

put in the effort you will get the result out and so when you don't see effort equaling result you get burned out and so I understand a lot of people are burnt out so the first and biggest mistake you're making is being in a negativity chamber you have to be around other people that are job searching that are on the hunt that are making wins that are getting interviews that are getting opportunities that are getting jobs we've been um live pretty much every day of the week for the past month o r so on our Discord we have about four to 600 people that join

us every single day live to just go on the job search together and every single day we've had people get interviews and we've had every single day people get jobs sometimes five plus people getting interviews every single day so when you put yourself in that kind of environment you start to go maybe I can do it too maybe it isn't all doom and gloom and then you take more action so that's the first thing I think people need to change the second thing and then I'm sure we can kind of Riff Off of this a little bit is um great yeah the the second thing

that is that this idea of you kind of don't know that you smell and so I always talk about it as a smell yeah yeah exactly we we all have a smell that we have to figure out it's something I've never heard this this is great it's something small that when a recruiter someone that's hiring is looking at your application that they see that makes them go hm maybe I should look at another candidate and it's really hard once you been in it for a while to see what's causing that that reaction and so I really like for folks to get an outside perspective for

somebody else to look at the resume look at the LinkedIn to look at the put on the deodorant the to to look at these things that are the first line of what people are seeing uh and then make sure that there's nothing off I did like 211s last week people didn't have right titles they weren't talking about themselves in the highest yeah you know yeah yeah it's it's you know when I spoke last week um in Amsterdam the the thing I say the most is people who are getting jobs aren't necessarily better than you they're doing the small stuff better than me exactly exactly the

small stuff compounds every little thing opens a door and the more doors you can open the more opportunity can come your way and you you have to sweat the details your LinkedIn needs to be good your your resume needs to be good your your every part of that online presence whatever that first line of defense is you need somebody in under six seconds to go this person is a software engineer and I won't get in trouble if I put them in front of the Nerds right like I I I as the person as the first line of the fence won't won't have my job impacted

by putting you in that room and so if you don't dispel that kind of fear in that first glance you're not making it to the next round yeah 100% I actually scheduled a tweet for today it said if we're being honest most people only read the top third of your resume correct yep and so that that top third has got to be dialed and and and the funny thing is too you can do this like you don't need to like it's not some like secret magic Arts I mean there are things like people reading it in f-shape pattern you should be able to like reinforce

the things you want folks to learn but just give your resume to your mama give her six seconds and then tell her what do you know about me dude I talk about I I actually pull a lot of this when on the marketing side and kind of branding in content like if my 70 year-old mother doesn't understand what I'm saying or what I'm writing yep it then it's wrong yeah and it's funny because you you'll have people do the exercise and they're like I know your phone number because they they put their name then their email their phone number their address everything underne that block

and people are reading that down and so then it's like oh so you actually didn't know anything about me or they make it to the summary statement if if you have one and the the it's like I work on agile teams great I know nothing about you right yeah and then maybe maybe they get past the the summary statement and then it's like it says some company they've never heard of some title that makes no sense to them and then they see that same thing so if you don't quantify like the size of the company what they're doing anything like that like there's no way

for us to figure out wh o you are what you're about yeah 100% yeah one of the things I talk a lot about is and when I help with resumes it's really so people want to hire very specific people for very specific needs from very specific Industries like right now it's very specific so like if you do not work for a essentially a big tech company you need to put who you are or who the company is revenue size what they do because if I'm hiring for an Ecom company and you essentially uh have worked all Ecom but you work for a bunch of small

companies I don't know about I'm not going to call you because I because I don't know what you know these small companies are yeah exactly so you know again and and you have to remember too typically the first people looking at your resume are not technical they're dumb recruiters yeah and they're control effing right that's what I'm saying 70 year old mother right if your mom or your grandma or your non-technical sister or brother cannot understand what you do typically a recruit doesn't know what you do either and then you would not get called you know I I want to go back to what you

were saying I think it's so important in my my live yesterday we kind of touched on this too about just the power of getting into these communities right Theo put out a video I watched a few like a month or two ago around just like the people that are in his community that he does are getting jobs yeah and it's not necessarily because of him but it's they're in the community and so can you talk about why every body should be in a Discord be in a slack be in something right now I know you already mentioned it but can we kind of go maybe

another first you smell you got to figure out why you smell right and so having others around you that can tell you what's wrong what you can fix is great the positivity aspect is really important right you need to be able to see people winning you need to be able to see people getting to where you want to go and you need real boots on the ground information as to what's working that this changes too quickly uh the things that people are focusing on changes too quickly and if you're just relying on your experience you only get so many swings at the bat right like

you you you only get so many times to interview only so many times to to shoot your shot but what if you could learn from a 100 other plus people that are all shooting their shot at the same time how much faster would you grow to hear their experience to hear the things that worked for them didn't work for them to be able to then send them a message and say hey what about my resume is different than your resume if that worked for you like there's just so many things that you get out of a community that you just wouldn't get if you're by

yourself uh you don't get the encouragement you don't get the compounding of experience and you just feel isolated and so yes this this is not a an easy career for a lot of folks in terms of if you're talking about softare engineering it's it's it es and flows layoffs are part of the game you you need a a group of people that can help you ride out the roller coaster to reinforce the things that you're doing and to bring you that little bit of belief and so that's kind of what I see the big things out of a community and then the smaller things are

just Community is how it it all works long term too right the folks that you're in community with now are your peers you are all going to go out into the world you're all going to get hired and eventually those teams are going to need to hire other Engineers everyone's asking themselves the three big questions now who do I know who can I who do my friends know and if not how can I approach internally when I'm hiring yeah and so you are just missing a whole level of opportunities and and jobs if you don't have a community of folks a network of individuals that

understand the shared experiences that you've gone through that understand your talent uh and can make referrals for you and so uh my biggest thing when it comes to jobs is networking I've been saying this for 10 plus years I think it's the thing that opens the most doors I hope think it's the thing that gets you the most opportunity but networking is also with your peers and then as you grow you all grow together and then that becomes such a rock solid Network there's so many people in this chat that I know are good friends that came together in communities and when they all make

it to the promised land and they need to hire more guess where they're going first yeah absolutely absolutely let me uh Justin comes in here the laid-off slack for the company that has 7 of us uh has been huge for morale as well and tips and tricks great for what's working and what's not in today's market support systems huge 100% um uh let me uh I I I want to talk about what so what I was taught as a recruiter growing up what I was taught as a recruiter growing up is you should go to one in-person Meetup a month yeah um one thing that

I did when I was in the in the Raleigh market for a year um is I went every week because I was single right and I think because because the shift has occurred from let's face it a lot of local meetups have gone by the wayside because of Co there are a lot more virtual communities in my opinion if you are not showing up to a thing like this once a week I think you I I think you're falling behind right I mean people are showing up a hundred devs and droves right and being a part of st uff and and I think again there's

there there's so many people there's so many names on the chat right now that like you know if a job were to pop up and I and somebody were to hit me up I would literally Source from the community it's just how it works and that's the same thing too with companies too like listen they don't want to go through 700 job postings or 700 applicants like Kelly Von texts me all the time when she posts a role and she's like I literally have 700 Engineers for a senior spot one senior spot yeah and and Kelly's one of the good ones they're probably going to

look at all of them all the folks that I talk to they're not it's too overwhelming and half of them are AI half of it's Bots like that's hyper but like it it's just it's too muddied right now the water to money there's too much going on that it's overwhelming for anybody that's strapped to get this many this much talent hey relle this much talent into into their into their companies they they're doing something different nowadays and they're going their sourcing from the folks that they know and so I I think that that going to a a Meetup advice strong uh at resilient coders every

single week they they have to get five connections and then they have to get three coffee chats they go off and on and every single week they have to go to two inperson events yes two in person right I hate these things two in person events right yeah and so that's the minimum yeah right at 100 devs we have similar requirements too where it's like you have to get out there you have to build these relationships and what I want people to understand is yes it's a lot of work it's it's it's a lot of work but the upside is so huge that it is

immensely worth it and I think a lot of people don't realize how the game is being played these days and they get frustrated when their 100,000th application gets ghosted for the 100,000th time it's just not how you play the game right now uh we have a saying at 100 devs that we nev er click apply we're not clickers uh my my advice on that's a little bit different because opportunities close so quickly that you do have to click just to get in the running but it's not how you get the opportunity you have to network your way in and if you find yourself um not

actively building out a list of companies that are actively hiring finding people at those companies building real relationships growing your network outside you're fundamentally doing the wrong thing if you want to get a job uh you you've brought up networking a few times now I know we're you know we've talked a little bit about what to do I think people are scared to reach out I don't know what to say I don't have anything to offer talk about how you should be positioning yourself in the DMS to peers but also hiring managers who may not even know you yeah you don't have to start off

super strong uh we can break down like in person and virtual so in person is easier because in person we show up I see you getting a slice of coffee I mean a slice of pizza or some coffee SCE of coffee yeah slice of coffee ice coffee it's like like Bren and I see you we make eye contact and I do this right that's it and then next next month the same interaction happens you do that the third time we're acquaint friend we're good that's it we know each other I I could add you on LinkedIn like we could have not said a word that

familiarity seeing each other in real physical spaces is the first step to connection and that's all you have to do just be present if you're present people start to recognize you and and and that's enough to kind of get the ball rolling if you have some sort of social anxiety or things around talking to others there are things you can do to to hopefully work on those things on our Discord at 100 devs we have a social anxiety Meetup Group where folks can kind of practice talking and engaging so that's something I would recommend um but also bring a buddy bring somebody that you already

know you don't even have to be technical just that you feel like safe and you can approach people as a pair and get used to talking and communicating but the whole thing is that it's not networking it's just making friends yep I talk more about Pokemon than I do about code at meetups right it's it's yeah it has nothing to do with your technical ability has nothing to do with your ability to write the best the most performant code it's it's just trying to make a friend yes and if you don't know how to make friends I like a book called How to Win Friends

and Influence People it kind of gives you like a framework to follow so that you know how to have conversations you're not stumbling uh so you can do these little things and over time just take action Try It You'll Find what feels weird you'll find what feels right you'll find your people too cuz not every group is going to be your Vibe and that's okay you can go to a different one so that's in person you build that up over time for virtual just engage if somebody makes a post on LinkedIn they want you to to see it yeah if somebody makes a post on

Twitter they want you to see it and if you like it they're going to see that you liked it and you just got to do that a couple of times until somebody recognizes you as the person that engages with their content people people I sound crazy when I say this in my talk that my entire career has transformed in the last four years because I've liked and commented on people's statuses there you go that's it I went from a recruiter to now whatever I do right like Community put it on your shirt come on now yeah yeah so like you know Community Builder right but

all I did was I started to double triple down on LinkedIn in Twitter and just start engaging with people right and and it's it's huge again you know I one of the reasons why we do I think live like this or so important reason why I do it is because I want people to connect with people on this and have an excuse and have a reason t o connect right so for example I don't know if I don't know if Matt knows Roxy right but Roxy could message Matt and be like hey I saw you on guidance counselor 2.0 today would love to chat there

you go then there's like an immediate in there there's immediate commonality which I think is which is which is huge when it comes to networking um let me ask you this when people shoot their shot right if if they like you know let me you know let me now granted you and I met at commit your code but like you know how do you like to be approached you're a busy man you can't take everybody's calls right I mean shout out to you for taking all those one-on ones but how do you like to be approached in the DMs I think the the problem with

me is that I go through spurts where I have time and time where I like I literally am scheduling bathroom breaks right and so yes I got to go to the bathroom yeah and so for me some folks will reach out but they just reached out at the wrong time so I recognize people that do like follow-ups like hey like they shoot their shot they don't get the direct response they shoot their shot again a couple months later and I'll see that and I'm more likely to respond the second time if for some reason I was busy the first right and it's something I'm working

I want to be able to respond to everyone but it's just it's just a lot um and so the way I like to be approached is just has nothing to do with code job if you mention an interest or a hobby or something like that you are way more likely to get a response uh and that's what I coach folks on too is like this idea that um you're either trying to provide a little bit of value be funny or show that you actually know or care about something that they like if you can do one of those three things the likelihood of you getting

a response goes through the roof yeah absolutely well usually what I like to do and literally I mean I take more advice prime example I posted on my Instagram today I literally uh I th ink the algorithm is getting really good on X I've started engag with a lot of D Toc Founders started liking their stuff and and some founder popped up on my Twitter feed and it was a sleep gummy a natural sleep gummy founder so I started to follow him like his stuff like his stuff like his stuff then I SL into his DMs like hey I'm a you know would love to

try your product I know a bunch of people I didn't know if he had an affiliate code he set me up sent sent me some sample and I love it and now I'm repping it that's dope go like like everything I say is what I do right and again I I think training being being a traditional agency recruiter for 11 years has taught me the skills everything I teach you all is everything we were taught as a recruiter as a recruiter we were we were required to meet three new people a day that's dope yeah coffee like imper like a like a like a meaningful

and so we met 15 people a week times 52 so that's 600 people a year and then you do that for 11 years like iy did hey it's a fair amount of people right so again everything everything I say um uh you know is is is the things I've done um I we're already there's seven minutes left I know you probably got to go to the bathroom at 10 o'clock Central so I I I I really want to get is there anything else that that you really want to get across right now yeah I I think for folks that I I know that a lot

of folks are in the suck right now we call it the trough of Sorrow uh and I know that when you're in the trough of Sorrow it's really hard to see the the end and there's also this like very weird thing about the trough of Sorrow is that the very very end it gets worse before it gets to the Wiggles of false hope and then into the promised land uh and so if you are in the trough of Sorrow uh I understand the feelings I understand the pain I understand what you're going through and I beg you I beg you uh to join a community

that can help lift you out of the trough uh whether it's torque whether i t's under as whether it's something that's local to you uh make sure you're surrounding yourself around people that can help you through it and then realize it does get better and that it gets better by you taking action does not even matter what that action is just start getting momentum that eventually you can stumble upon the right thing now there are some right things that I think you should be doing I think you should take a um an approach which means that you shouldn't be going into your days like an

accident have a game plan for each day know what your goals are for that day know what small steps you are taking that will eventually lead you to the job uh we tend to hyper focus on the end goal which is getting the job but we' be way better served if we had things that were in our control each day I'm going to engage with 10 people on Twitter I'm going to engage with 20 people on LinkedIn like these things that if you do them enough lead the opportunity but are fully in your control so that you don't burn out so don't go into your

days like an accident set up real digestible goals that have you winning each day belong to a community that uplifts you and supports you through the trough and then realize that networking is the only thing that matters in my opinion these days right now it's too hard to cut through the BS you you need those real relationships to have more opportunity yeah I I I truly think and I know I talk all the time but n i mean networking is everything now I mean it really is it's so hard there's so much clutter everywhere with AI right now there's um so much inauthenticity across the

board and I think the more you can get on a one-on-one tactical basis um it's it's it's gonna be absolutely massive it's gonna be absolutely massive um I I I I want to be able to obviously plug um what you're doing what's what what's the best way to get in 100 devs and and resilient coders and all that yeah you can uh we're on Discord uh you can always just search 100 devs on Google 1000 DS 100 devs uh we'll pop right up click that link join us on Discord um once you join Discord you're joining a community of 7,000 people we'll be live today

at 5:30 p.m eastern time uh and tomorrow which will be Friday 5:30 p.m.

eastern time for folks that are with us live and then if you're watching this as a recording uh we're live pretty much every Tuesday and Friday 5:30 Eastern Time hundreds of people that are sharing their real experiences of What It's Like on the job search right now now if you're in Boston and Philly uh definitely check out resilient coders and uh also uh got to plug the podcast Mobile 40 uh podcast right now super pumped uh programming podcasts I love it that's awesome well y'all thank you again for this um thank you again for showing up Leon thank you my friend so so much stay on so I can say bye to you backstage but yall have a fantastic one love to see you in the torque Discord love to see you them obviously in the 100 devs Discord uh those balloons are killing me y'all have a great Thursday last guidance counselor of the week yall have a great one take