someone other than me!

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

So for everybody that's listening or that will listen, this is David Green, David is in Raleigh, David is a dear friend of mine. I unfortunately was not able to work with him and place him in Raleigh, but he was very influential in getting me involved within the tech community in Raleigh and able to really get me involved in Trinug, which is the .NET User Group in Raleigh and be able to speak at a few code conferences that they host. So, David, thanks for joining me, man. If you want to just go ahead and give everybody rundown about yourself, what do you do? And then we can go from there.

Yeah, sure. So like Taylor said, my name is David Green. And I've been a software developer for about 20 years, pretty much exclusively within the Microsoft Stack, so .NET, C-Sharp, SQL Server, those kind of things, and mainly on the website of things as well. done some architecture type work, I've done some team lead type stuff, so managing teams remotely, managing teams locally. And that's just kind of my background in a nutshell. And right now I'm actually just landed a new job and I'm in a completely different space. So I'm working with Python and a little bit of machine learning and Linux. It's just a completely different stack.

So that's kind of an interesting transition. And that is kind of where I'm at right now. Cool, man. Yeah, I didn't realize you got into some Python stuff. That's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, that was something I was really looking for. And that's sort of one of the challenges when you're looking for work and you're trying to move, at least as a software developer, you're trying to move between stacks. You know, there's definitely a lot of people will ask you, well, hey, you know, how much experience do you have in this other stack that you want to move towards? and you can say, well, not much. And usually they'll just pass.

But it depends on the company. It depends on what they're looking for. Absolutely. And then what company for the listeners you call them, who do you end up with? Yeah, so I'm working for a company called NetApp. And they're based out of Sunnyvale, but I'm actually based out of the RTP office. So that's here in Durham, North Carolina. Awesome. So is this gig 100% remote? No, it's like, it's actually, there is an office in RTP, but it's like five minutes from where I live. So that was one of the things I was looking for was to work where I didn't have to commute. My previous job was 45 minutes.

I just couldn't take it anymore. I was just dying. That was a one-way commute without traffic. Yeah, that's not fun. Yeah, it was fun. So real quick, for people to find you on Twitter and whatnot, what's your hand? Yeah, sure. So my handle is at David J. E. T. kind of an odd handle. And that has his own story. But basically, I did a lot of managing of remote teams. And I worked with a lot of guys in India who had JIT in their name, you know, so like, yeah, be JIT, doh JIT. So I don't know. I thought it'd be funny to kind of fit in with them.

That's awesome. Yeah. So I'm David JIT, you know, so they totally relate to that. That's fantastic. I had no idea. I was always wondering why you had that now. I know Even closer together So So so basically and for the people who've listened before so basically really what I try to do is is For this podcast so I so I've given the same talk obviously, you know in Raleigh And then I gave it that music City Code this past year and a lot of people come up to me afterwards like hey listen And that was fantastic. Do you have any slides or do you have any PowerPoint presentations?

Well, as you know, because I know you've sat in on one talk that I've given, you know, it's all Q and A, right? It's all, it's all live, you know, because ultimately the last thing developers want to hear on their Saturday is a recruiter preaching at them. Right. So, you know, I want everybody to ask questions and get people involved. So you sent me, you know, obviously you sent me some stuff that you've spoken about. So tell the listeners kind of what we're kind of kind of dive in today with and just kind of give a preface of that. Sure, sure. So basically, for me, let's give you a little background.

So about a year ago, maybe, yes, it was January 2017, kind of had a New Year's resolution. I was at a job. I wasn't completely thrilled with it, to be honest. My new year's resolution was by 2018, so I had a whole year to do this to find a new job. So that's the premise of my journey. This is what I'll be talking about today is what did I do? It did take a full year. It actually took 11 months. I didn't get it in December. So there's a process to it, this 11 month journey where I did a lot of things that just did not work.

And then I did a lot of things that, you know, were pretty, I did work. And so I kind of want to go through, you know, basically three things that didn't work for me that really didn't work for me. And then three things that kind of worked for me. And that's sort of the idea behind what I wanted to share with you guys today. Awesome. So I guess, so let's go ahead and hit the three things that didn't work for you because ultimately what work obviously got you a job. So I'm interested in what didn't work and then like I said I'll I'll try them in but man everybody's been tired if you're gonna be talk already so I run with it.

Absolutely thanks thanks. So okay three things that didn't work. Number one thing that didn't work by far was job boards and by job boards it's not just dice.com and monster I don't even know who uses monster anymore but you know I think career blower runs it back. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That thing was a complete waste of time. And a lot of people think, well, okay, I don't use those things. I use indeed because that's pretty popular. And indeed, is really just an aggregator. And I'll be honest with you, that's interesting from a, oh, these are the people who are hiring perspective, but from an actual following a lead from Indeed, all the way to the end and getting, you know, getting even an interview was pretty much not a fruitful endeavor at all.

Yeah, I found that to be a complete waste of time. And here's the thing, a lot of people think, well indeed doesn't just aggregate from dice and monster, it goes to company websites and finds, so for example, indeed we'll aggregate something from say like Microsoft or something from Apple or some company that's hiring. And it's true, it will aggregate those, and then actually what you could do is you could go to their websites, you go to Microsoft's website or whoever's and apply for that position there through their actual website and you're gonna get pretty much the same result and that result is nothing. You're gonna hear nothing.

I mean, you really need a different approach, a different way because they see so many resumes and they even have, there are systems in place that will just filter them automatically. So if you don't have certain keywords, even though you might be a good fit for a position, your user's not going to be considered. Yeah. Okay. So, so, so, so job boards didn't work. What is mother? What are the two things that really didn't work for you? So the other two things I would say was, so you hear this all the time that, you know, when you're looking for a job, you need a network and that's true.

I'm definitely, I'm all about network. I was saying, you better be about networkers. You're going to take me out of a job. Yeah. Right. Well, so here's the thing. I thought networking, you know, and so my definition as an introvert, I'm going to say, I'm developer guy, I thought networking was showing up to a meetup group and whoever was hosting that meetup group, you know, meeting that guy and it was usually a recruiter, and it's nothing against recruiters obviously. And that was it. That's it. That's what I thought networking meant. And just getting that guy's business card and maybe, you know, sending him an email and just kind of going from there.

And that's, you should do that. I mean, you know, if you are looking for work, I definitely, you know, I wouldn't say don't do that. But that's That's not, I think that's not all networking is. So networking goes beyond that. It could be meeting other people, the other attendees at that meetup. It could also be going to networking events. So I found networking events that weren't specific to say .net or C-sharp, but they were just in general networking events, companies. I went to this one thing, which was one of the coolest things I've ever been to. It's like a reverse job fair. So what that is, is instead of you trying to sort of sell yourself, you have companies, they go up on stage, they do a five minute pitch about how great they are.

And, you know, there's like, it's almost like a competition. I mean, it feels like a competition. It's not. Yeah. And they go up there and they pitch themselves. And then you, and then afterward they have a booth and you go over there. If you, if you like their pitch, you go over there and you talk to whoever's, you know, at the booth. And so I had a lot of good leads from events like that versus just sort of the traditional job fair or the traditional, or like I described earlier, just going to meet them. So okay, so you're saying network didn't work for you, but you're talking about just like the standard networking going to use groups.

So you would advise what to people who have not had success with networking, trying to find events that are just different than the norm. Yeah, yeah, basically. Look for things that are different from the norm for sure. Talk to, you can talk to recruiters, but I think I had a better success if possible talking with people who are actually, you know, like internal, I guess internal recruiters from that company. So interesting. Okay. Yeah, that doesn't mean that, you know, again, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't work with recruiters. I want to make that very clear. My last replacements before the one I have now was with a third party recruiter such as yourself.

Yeah, you know, so definitely, I'm just saying to expand horizons and consider, you know, working with other, you know, other methods. Absolutely, man. Absolutely. And you're making a good point to why I want other people on this podcast because I can preach third party agency recruitment all day. Yep. But obviously you had success with internal recruiters. Yep. You know, and so, So again, just getting a different perspective. That's why I want other people on this thing. So third thing, go ahead. Yeah, the third thing, actually, this isn't really, I actually did get a couple of leads, and I followed up on them. But what I did that didn't work was, I was really, one of those people who doesn't like talking, having the difficult conversations, and the difficult conversation I think you and I both know is the salary conversation.

Yeah, absolutely. awkward conversation and you're just sometimes you're just so happy that a company called you back. Yeah, it's following up with you that you don't want to rock the boat. You're like, oh gosh, you know, I'll just not mention it and we'll just kind of assume everything's okay. And then if I get further in the process, then I'll bring it up. And I can't tell you, I actually went, I did this twice. This is how afraid of that conversation I was. I did this twice where I went all the way to to the final round, I was gonna be given an offer, extended an offer, and because I hadn't had that conversation, that's when that came up, and we were about 30, 40K off.

Holy cow. You know, what I was expecting versus what they were, and it just, you know, there's no, once you're that far off, you can't make it work. So definitely it's the most, it's an awkward conversation, but you have to have that up front. That would be my tip, so that you're not wasting everybody's time. So what, I mean, let me ask you this, just if there's one piece of advice you could give to people, because I know, I mean, so, and I talk about this too, I become so desensitized to salaries because, yeah, literally, I meet people 30 seconds or a minute into our conversation.

Yeah. And, and I'm like, Hey, how much are you making? And literally, I ask you for like, your entire history. I mean, we get pretty granular, and so I'm so desensitized, but what's your advice to somebody like yourself who is nervous handling those conversations? Okay, so I would say this. First of all, and this is just something that happened recently, and it's been in the news. In California, for example, they now have a law where they can no longer recruiters, whether in turtle or third party, can no longer ask you about your current compensation. And this actually came up in my interview because this company I work for is based out of California.

So they were anticipating this. And so they basically said, look, we can't ask you that question. So what we're going to do, and so that actually they brought it up, was we're going to give you a range that we're hiring at. And if you think you fit in that range, let's keep going with this process. And if you don't, so I guess from my perspective, if you're talking with a recruiter, you know, internal or external, and this comes up, they, well, and it doesn't come up, you can say, well, I'd like to know, you know, at what sort of what is the hiring, what is the range for what this company is looking for as far as salary goes.

Right. And then you're not giving a specific number, you know, you're not locking it down, and then from there you can kind of make your decision. That would be my advice. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So basically it's it's it's putting the onus on the individual to ask for a range. Yes, to start not necessarily like divulging what you're at. Just be like, hey, listen, like, right? Really, I'm targeting between the 100 to 115 range. Or even in the ballpark. Yes, exactly. That's exactly how, you know, the conversations I had went down with. Okay, exactly. Awesome. So those are the three things that did not work. Tell me, did I even kind of what worked and really your key success that you could share with other maybe developers and IT guys and just people in general that are looking?

Absolutely, I'd love to do this is the best part, right? So this is the, you survived the first half of this. Yeah, absolutely. This is what you're holding. Hopefully this is what you're waiting for. Okay. So the first, the first thing that worked for me that changed things quite drastically was using a professional resume service. So there's a couple out there. I'm not, you know, not sponsoring any in particular. I used one called resume raiders, but that worked for me. Not saying it's the best or the worst or whatever. It worked for me. They're you're looking at about, I don't know, depending on, they usually have lots of different options.

But it could be anywhere from about 200 US dollars to maybe 400 US dollars. That's sort of the range that I was looking at. Right. Totally worth it. Changing my resume did a couple things. actually I paid for a service that didn't just change my resume but also changed my LinkedIn profile and when I say changed it wasn't a sort of like hey we're gonna do we're gonna do everything and you're just gonna like it and you have no feedback it was a very interactive process where we go back and forth and edit a Google Doc until everything looks you know the way I'm happy with and but basically doing this getting getting a professional resume service everyone thinks, including myself, that we're good writers.

You know, we just do. I don't know why, it's just a weird, you know, psychological thing. We think we're decent writers. But actually, we may be, that may be the case, but when it comes to resume writing, it's a different, you're trying to communicate things in a very concise and clear way, and there's certain ways you should do things, certain ways you shouldn't. And a professional resume service, especially if they've worked with technical, like software engineers, for example, really helps. You don't want to go with a resume service that's just kind of like generic, like we just do everything. You know, we do, you know, we do, you know, you track secretaries, we do lawyers, we do, you know, you don't want that.

But an IT professional resume service would be, the thing that once I started doing that, I started seeing a lot of, a lot more hits as far as, and that actually leads to my, to my sort of my second point, which is not only fixing the resume, fixing the LinkedIn, I started getting a lot of what I would call inbound marketing. So what that is is I wasn't even trying, I wasn't at this point, I wasn't really even doing anything. In the past, it was me going out and looking, doing the search or getting the email about once a day, say, hey, here are all the different possibilities.

Now what was happening was I was getting recruiters and internal external just contacting me. And for some reason, my LinkedIn, well, because I use a resume service, they were picking up on keywords and things like that. It was, so you can think of it as more SEO optimized. And I was getting, and not only was I getting more hints, but I was getting quality hints. And it was people reaching out to me. So, you know, pretty much, yeah, I would say about 80% of what was coming in from LinkedIn was people reaching out to me, not me saying, hey, I like what I saw on your website or whatever.

So that pretty much changed everything. Getting inbound marketing, where people are pursuing you is all the difference. Yeah. Cause when you're pursuing us, someone else, and this will sound harsh for other developers, but when you're pursuing, you sound, you know, we sound like we're desperate. Sometimes we do. We could come across that way, you know, and it depends on how unhappy you are, I guess. with your third job. But yeah, you know, one more thing I'll just throw in there is there is an option in LinkedIn, which is called premium. I think it's like $29 a month. I used it and then I didn't use it.

And honestly, I couldn't even tell the difference. So just save you guys $29 a month. I know LinkedIn's not gonna be happy about me saying this. But we're not sponsored by LinkedIn. It's not about LinkedIn. I didn't see the value add, honestly. My quality of leads coming in were just as good. Nothing changed. Nothing changed. So, so real quick, I'm going to interrupt you. So it's really cool what you said. And I have to say, so I, so I looked at your, I looked at your LinkedIn, you know, just, just to see what you're doing right now at NetApp. Cause I know at your previous gig, you're doing some like data science stuff and whatnot.

And so, so I actually want to be knowledgeable for this, for this, for this call. But I have to say, your LinkedIn looked fantastic. And in my previous episodes, I actually outlined how to write your LinkedIn, and you did exactly what I outlined in the episodes ago. So for those of you that are listening, just this one because it's with another software developer, go back and listen to my other episodes, because I actually outlined exactly what David did on his LinkedIn, and he just said he got more hits because of it. So I'm not stupid. I am somewhat correct in what I say. So yeah, so props to you.

And I tell developers this too, and obviously you and I are on the same city. If you were I or were in the same city, I would have gotten mad at you because I would have totally written your resume for you. But I tell developers, if you need help with resumes, resume writing, and you're not on the market, still come to me and I'll do it for free. And the reason that is, is because a lot of times recruiters, we are just out for money, and we're just out for us. So there's one guy I listen to a lot. everybody listens to these days is Gary Vaynerchuk and he always talks about the 51 49 principle like always offering more value than you are taking and so even if I can't help you on the job search my goal is still add value so so just to piggyback on the guys listening locally if you're ever need of that help I will definitely help you with that so so that's two do you have a third one yeah I do You have a third one and it's kind of, there's a lot of little things here but the basic idea is, and this, it's common sense but a lot of people don't do it and that is prepare for your interview.

I know that sounds so, I know that sounds so cliche and I don't mean like just be like, well okay, they listed C sharp and they listed JavaScript and they listed, I don't know. Like what we tend to do, at least what I tend to do and I think a lot of developers do is we look at the technology stack and we say, I know that, I know that, I know that, I'm ready, you know, or I know that. maybe we just brush up on only that. And when you get that first phone screen, a lot of people don't even get past that first phone screen.

And it's because they haven't really prepared for the interview. And I think about it almost like the SAT, I don't know if, or ACT for those of you who didn't take the SAT. I don't know about you guys. I was terrible at both. You could count it on one hand when my score was. Yeah, I don't know. Like people would say, you know, like, oh, you can't study for that. I see whatever, but you can. And I did. And I could tell you, I spent like a year preparing for that thing. And, and I'm not saying you need to prepare a year for your interview.

Take it like seriously, you know, like this is a, this is going to change your life. Like your job, you know, big part of your life is your job. And how seriously do you care about changing, you know, your job or getting a job? And so, so what I would do, I did a couple of things, but really, you know, first of all, obvious one was get to know about the company as much as you can based on their website. Okay, that's easy to do. The second thing would be like, I kind of joke about this, but you know, cyberstalker interviewer and I mean, I mean, legally, of course, what I mean by that was, I found out the name of my interviewer and I literally, you know, and the company he worked for in one case and I just pasted that in Google, turns out that he had a podcast and, you know, and had a YouTube channel or something.

And I ended up watching one or two of his things and listening to his podcast. So when he called me up and we'd go through the phone screen, he was going through some things and I was like, oh yeah, I'm familiar with this and this and this. And it's because I listened to his podcast, or I'd seen this. And that went a long way. It goes a long way. Because they're like, oh wow, you really seem very interested. And that's something that you want to convey in the interview. Again, if you care about the company, you care about getting another job, you wanna actually come across as you're really, you're interested and it's genuine and it's genuine.

And that's gonna happen if you do this kind of preparation. The third little bullet point I would say about interview prep is you wanna make sure, take your resume, look at the job rack, the description and see where you're gonna add value because you talked about that earlier. You wanna be able to add value to wherever you're gonna be going. Absolutely. So you want to be able to say, okay, well I did, you know, I work with this particular JavaScript framework. Okay. Looks like they use it here and then you can maybe see, you know, okay, that's where I'm going to be able to help these guys the most, you know, if this is something very good at or, you know, so that kind of stuff.

So I would say just to summarize, you know, for the three things that worked, you know, get a professional resume service. You want to work on, you want to focus on inbound marketing, which means actually making ensure your LinkedIn looks decent, looks good, and interview prep. So you know, you wanna make sure you know about the company and you know about your interviewer if you can, and that kind of stuff. So let me ask you this, David. With how do you prepare? So, and you are a fantastic example of this because you're traditional.net guy, and now you do a Python. Did you prepare? Like did you do some Pluralsight stuff with Python?

Like how would you recommend developers? If they're wanting to switch from .NET to all JavaScript or .NET to Python, how would you recommend that switch happen? Okay. Let's see. I guess what I could say is it depends on what you're trying to aim for as far as your next job goes. There are two types of jobs that I applied for. I looked at manager software manager positions, I saw for developer type positions that weren't necessarily in my specialty area. So for managers, there's certain ways those kind of interviews are sort of, they're different. They're different. And we can tell that could even be a separate podcast.

But to answer your question, for software developers, there's a couple ways to prepare. There are some plural side classes out there. I've looked at them, but it had been a while. The basic idea is what you're going to find in interviews. there's sort of two things they're going to do. The one big thing, the one big trend I noticed, was they're going to get, they're very big these days into homework assignments or take home assignments. Yes. And that, in fact, I think when it comes to that, right, it doesn't matter what language it is in. I mean, if it's in Java, if it's in Python, if it's in C Sharp, and say you're a Python guy, but it's in C Sharp, you can knock this out of the park because you have a couple days to work on this, and you can spend all, you know, you can leverage as much time in three, four, five days to basically make this like your masterpiece.

You put in all your energy into completing that assignment and doing it like it's the most important thing in the world. Now, that said, it's still gonna take, if the assignment is in Python and you've never done Python before, okay? Well, then you need to have thought about this sort of ahead of time. So you probably were studying, and this is what I was doing. I was studying Python for months before I actually had the position I have now, which involves Python. Right. And that was using Pluralsight. I bought books. I'm a big book guy, old school book, not like Kindle, but like physical books.

I worked through some of those. I have a beginning Python book. my book shelf, I'm not ashamed to own a book that has the word beginning in it. Right, right. And then that was for months, that's something I was working on for months. And nothing crazy, I wasn't working like 20 hours a week on those things. But a couple hours a week, just kind of getting up to speed. So yeah, so basically the first thing I'll do is just sort of knock out your homework assignments if you get them from the interview. The second thing is practice your whiteboarding. And you're going to say to yourself, well, how do you do that?

There are books on this. There are books on this. The best resource I found was something called interview cake. So that's a website. Is that cake like cake you eat? Yeah, cake you eat. So it's interview space cake. That's great. Just for the viewer. Yeah, not one word. And just Google this, they have for pretty much any language that you're gonna be, you know, any common language you're gonna be interviewing for. So whether that's C sharp, C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, they have the problems that you would typically get at a lot of these companies. They all fall into a few categories and a few types of questions.

Once you can practice on this website, I'm not getting paid by these guys for anything, so just FYI. But if those books and places want to sponsor us in my podcast, I am fully talking to have conversations. Absolutely. Yeah, so something like interview cake, there may be some other websites out there. I'm just giving you one. Yeah, for sure. But I think the interactive sort of walk through a problem and try to solve it. And I know with interview cake, you actually get a problem. And if you get stuck, you can get a clue. And then you get stuck again, you can get another clue.

And so you can keep getting clues basically until they give you the solution, if you just can't figure it out. But whiteboarding is very common in software, developer interviews. And not only that, it's something that you, again, people say, oh, you can't study for whiteboard, and that's absolutely not true. You can. It's almost like basically what you're doing is you're taking techniques and knowledge, and you're making them, you're transforming them into habits. So that when you get up there in front of a whiteboard, you're acting from reflex. It's almost like martial arts. You've practiced so often that what you're doing next when you're solving that problem, you've seen it before, you know what's coming at you, and you know how to respond.

And that's the best way I can describe whiteboarding. It's something that you can train and make, and basically your answers can come out almost like reflexes, habits. I remember my first whiteboarding interview, it was, I think it was back in 2007, I mean years ago. And I can't tell you how much I sweat, I sweat it through my suit, it was disgusting. You know, and I'd never had anything like it before. So scared everything. I got almost nothing. I got one question right. I mean, I totally flubbed it. That's awesome. You know, it wasn't a reflex. I was totally stunned by the whole situation. It was overwhelming, I guess, is the best way to put it.

And you know, if you, it's almost like, yeah, if you train enough, you're not going to be overwhelmed. You're going to be, you know, you can manage it. So, yeah. Yep.