Untapped Advantage: How To Network as a Software Developer

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

hey folks we're going to go to LinkedIn for a question so um this one starts off with I know you're going through some burnout and all so don't worry about getting back to this right away yes I am a little bit burnt out uh this week has been just a long week and uh hopefully after the weekend I'll be feeling better but we'll see how it goes um I recently had a take-home project and unfortunately I didn't get selected for the interviews I'm sorry to hear that um you know I like that I like that this person is not not like hyperfocused on like oh no that means I'm the worst I'm a failure that kind of thing like this is the type of uh thing where like this can and will happen and it's unfortunate like I don't want to minimize that but the

reality is like you'll see like they're trying to move forward and do better and I think like that's the attitude it's really hard but like that's the attitude we want right it's like what's in your control let's keep going so they said however they did say that I should apply again in the future so this is awesome right like this is one of those situations and I obviously don't know the employer or whatever the scenario but this could be a matter of like hey look you did great and we had to not we had to but we selected a candidate that just happened to do better maybe they see a lot of potential and the uh the level that they're looking for is just higher so they're like you know right now no but in the future like we see potential in you it would

be great if they had you know capacity to bring this person on at a you know more Junior role or something but overall I think like that's in my opinion if it's not going to work out for an interview like that feels like really good um feedback to be able to get like that's that's positive in my opinion so they say my question is how can I network with people in a company I want to work for how should I go about my first message and what can I do to make it worth their while so I think this is a great question um I've talked about this kind of stuff in previous videos and um I think one of them I can remember in particular is one of my earliest code commute vide so if you want to scroll back through the channel and

look through one of the earlier ones um I think I was trying to talk about all the ways to not Network because I I definitely uh from creating content on LinkedIn and stuff I definitely get a lot a lot of stuff coming in where I'm like oh man like this is just not how I would recommend doing it so um I'm going to spend time in this video trying to talk through at least my personal opinion on what works um this will obviously have a bias towards like how I think that I would like to be approached on on platforms and then I will try my best to kind of expand that perspective and maybe think outside of the box for just my own opinion these are if you haven't seen my videos before I try to make sure that I'm clear about where my

biases are if I can and then if I can acknowledge them like how can I how can I be thinking about things in different ways that maybe aren't ways that I normally think about them so I'll try my best there uh just a reminder if you want questions answered leave them in the comments below find Dev leader on social media that's also my main YouTube channel you can uh send me a message on any social media platform or in this case this person found me on LinkedIn it's Nick centino profile should be open for messages um let's dive into it so um I think one of my pieces of advice here just in general for networking a super high level is like my opinion is treat networking like a marathon not a Sprint the purpose of me saying that is that I know especially for

people that are searching for jobs and stuff um you know you're applying to things you're you're waiting to hear back you want to make sure that you can get your interviews and I think sometimes people especially given the volume that they're doing for applications and by the way like given the job market I actually do recommend a lot of volume because other people are doing it so it's it's a lot more like a kind of feels like a lottery or you know you're gambling to try and get that uh that spot so I think volume really helps but I think what happens is that they go okay I should be networking too and then they try to take the exact same approach of their networking and I I think that that my opinion just like doesn't work so well so if we think about taking

a high volume approach to networking what ends up happening is that you go on I'm going to use LinkedIn a lot for these examples um you can take what I'm saying about LinkedIn and apply it to other platforms technically it's just that LinkedIn is sort of um I don't know it's like it's more well known for having more like industry professionals and stuff it's this point it's basically just turned into Facebook but um I think the intention is that you have more more business and uh sort of recruiters and stuff on on LinkedIn but as a Creator I can I feel like it's basically Facebook at this point so um if we take the approach of going with a lot of volume what ends up happening is that like how do you get volume in terms of uh networking on LinkedIn while you go find

people and you send connection requests right as many as you can until linkedin's like you're done I don't know what the limit is on a standard profile um it's definitely not many and the next thing that people do is like for every connection request they they get they go okay well I'm just going to copy and paste this message and I'm going to attach my resume and say can you refer me to a job because that's what you would do if you're trying to spend as little time as possible to go get to as many people as you can right you're trying to minimize your time investment in in exchange for like getting to more and more people but um it just it doesn't I'm not saying it's impossible to work I I don't I never want to come across that way it's not like

things are impossible or you should never I just don't recommend it and I think given enough volume like with anything like given enough volume sure it might work I just don't think that it's optimal more personally and to give you an example um when people send me a message on LinkedIn um you know I've been pretty transparent over the last few videos I put out this week like I'm super burnt out and even when I am not burnt out and I'm just going about my regular Pace trying to get my stuff done if I get a message and it's basically like hi I've attached my Hi here's my background like I don't know anything about the person right it's just inbound um hi you know I I have this much experience in school and here's where I went and here's my major and I've attached

my resume can you please refer me to a job position what I do with requests like this is I delete them immediately I don't open the resume I don't do anything with it I just delete it and I'm saying that to be transparent and I'm not saying that because I'm sitting here like oh it's because I'm so much better than everyone else I simply do not have time to do that I'm going to expand on this in just a moment actually I don't have time to do that and the other thing is that I cannot just refer you to job positions if I have no idea who you are the the problem with this approach is that like you were asking me to do something like number one a lot of people will say like review my resume I'm like I got I got things

to do man like I'm I'm busy I don't have time to review strangers resumés again I'm coming back to this in just a moment but um I don't have time for that so unfortunately I would love to just have infinite time but I simply do not number two is that you're asking me to put my name behind you for a job position and unfortunately I just do not know you so it's to me it's actually very unfair to ask me to do that and people might mean different things when they say can you refer me to a jaw position they might be saying hey do you have openings can you can you point me in the direction of this but the reason that I don't like this approach in general is because I don't think that it's a way that you approach strangers in the

first place like let's take this example that I just walked through and pretend we don't we aren't using the internet I am a person you see me walking out of the Microsoft campus building okay so I come out of the office and now I'm walking on the street and you come up to me and you say hi my name's Nick I have four years of uh going to school for this uh degree and um I have my resume here could you review this and then could you also refer me to a position at at Microsoft you you just would not do it it's it's just weird and like it's sounds extra weird when I say like imagine doing this in person now I understand that like you know how we communicate and stuff on social media is different but one of the reasons that I

think that this is a weird interaction again I'm not I don't have like a psychology background I don't not like I don't know just I'm just trying to share my perspective on this stuff I feel like this is weird because you are asking a complete stranger to do things for you and it would be nice if complete strangers would just do things for us but like like I said I I'm just busy and I have other things that I need to be doing so I would love to help but given all of the other priorities that I have in my life I simply cannot I don't I just do not have capacity for that so this approach of like hi I'm a stranger please do something for me and often times just to add on like just to layer these pieces on a lot of

the times these messages aren't even like a people don't seem to acknowledge that they're asking for a favor in this so it's kind of just like here's information about me like I'm I need you to refer me to a job and it it's just a really ineffective way of networking I just I just don't have the capacity to do that or the interest so now that I've talked about like things I'm not really a fan of before I jump into oh I just hit something on my computer there's a button on the side of my keyboard that I didn't know existed until right now and I don't know what it does but there we go back to to dark mode um before I get into what I would try to change about that I did want to bring up that what I'm going to be

doing on my main Channel Dev leader I have a couple sent in so far I am going to try to do resume reviews so back to I don't have time for that yeah let's make it content then so if people want their resum reviewed I am going to be trying to open that up a little bit um I don't have a formal process for that yet but what I would ask is if you're interested like I said at the beginning of this video look for Dev leader on social media send me a message I'll get you set up with an email you can send your stuff to um you can do it on LinkedIn but please if you don't want me to just delete it like I was saying start off by saying hey I was watching Code commute so I know where you're coming

from and then what I'll try to do is um I'll I'll have a conversation with people I'll try to keep it anonymous because I think I'm assuming that's what people want if you want it to not be anonymous that's totally cool um but what I'll do is I'll take your resume I will try to redact stuff in uh Adobe so that your name and stuff's not showing up I'll probably try to take out company names unless they're like like really big uh companies that are just like you know if it's like Microsoft Facebook IBM Oracle like stuff like that I'll probably just keep in there because otherwise it starts to paint a picture and I just want to try to keep people Anonymous but I will try to do resume reviews based on you know my perspective and opinion and we'll see how that goes

to start and um like I said that'll be on my main Channel Dev leader so do look for Dev leader on social media contact me and I'll I'll try to set that up so I'm trying to transform things that are like too much work for me into content opportunities and we'll see how that goes that's exactly what this channel is right um so let's talk about how I would change the approach to networking and to be honest it doesn't start off with connecting with people and then asking them to do things because um Let me let me use another example it's a sounds like a tangent but it's a bit of a parallel and I think that it applies here um I am by like in my heart I am a software engineer like all the stereotypical software engineering things like that's me um I'm

introverted uh I am not good selling things so I build a SAS on the side called brand ghost it's ridiculously uncomfortable for me to try and like sell like for me to be like hey like I think you should buy my product like I'm the wrong person for that and I am trying my best to be better it's just it's it's hard it's not natural for me and so I started trying to look into books and resources on like how are other people getting coached on how to like sell um and selling's interesting because everything like I'm I'm definitely not an expert I after reading a couple pages of a few books uh you know not an expert but uh a lot of the the patterns I've been seeing are that people talk about it like like even if you were going to Market yourself

and you know for posting content online right like I have courses online okay so people will say instead of making every single Post online that you're like for selling stuff you don't advertise your product in every single post because then you just look like a commercial then people are like this is uninteresting go away it's it's just noise so instead what people do is they'll say hey what you should try and do is have like you know X perent of your content is like informational you know another percent is whatever and in terms of marketing and selling what they're saying is like you're you're getting people that um you're getting the attention of people and they're coming back because they like what you're saying and then when you've sort of built up trust with them through content then what you're able to do is you

know layer in like a by the way like here's something I have or you start to create enough um like a I'm going to call it like brand awareness for lack of better phrasing like I said I'm not an expert here um that people actually come to you and they say hey do you have a product or service like this so it's like people reaching out to me like hey do you have courses hey do you have resume review Services hey do you offer mentoring so um like the example that I'm I can give you right this moment is like in this video I'm not making this video to sell you anything but what I did already was I mentioned a couple things like I mentioned I have a a sass on the side called brand ghost you might be like well Nick what's that

that sounds kind of cool um you might say hey I heard you say choruses that sounds interesting like what choruses do you have right so you find ways to sprinkle these things in now to bring this back to working it's the same idea where it's not hi I'm so and so and like I need this from you right as a as someone trying to Market something it's not hi I need you to buy this like every post I make that's not my primary means to communicate so instead what I do recommend is I don't I feel like people sending connection requests is like just do it whatever like the worst that can happen is someone's like I don't know this person I don't want to connect with them and honest I feel like most people are like I don't know this person sure whatever it's

it's LinkedIn someone saw something so you 10 people viewed my profile right okay sure click connect um so I'm not I don't think the connection request stuff is that big of a deal I know some people are like if you were to go look up like LinkedIn advice on how to network I like some people are like no you have to make the best first impression with your opening connect message and I'm like I just I don't care man the majority of connect messages I see coming to me are like hey I saw your post and would love to connect like I okay like sure like yeah I saw that you liked the last 10 posts so I get it um so to me it doesn't add a ton unless there's um maybe something that's a little bit more specific right so we can come

back to this in just a moment what I would generally recommend and back to this person's questions specifically is like if you're thinking about trying to network and connect with people at different companies we're thinking about LinkedIn here what I might do is try to look at people that are talking about that company or seeing if you can I don't know all the features like uh on LinkedIn for going to do this but if you're able to search for people that work at companies I don't know if you need a certain tier of LinkedIn to do that but I think if you spend some time on LinkedIn you can probably be like hey this person works at Google and I would love to work at Google okay so like follow them right you could send them a connection request so you can see some of

their stuff whatever the point is that uh and this is kind of interesting for LinkedIn I find at least when I start interacting with people of a uh either certain company or certain role uh I feel like again I don't know this for a fact I feel like the LinkedIn algorithm kind of steers me in the direction of that for example if I send a connection request to someone at Google or I send a connection request to someone who is a CTO or CEO I start to to see more of that coming up in my feed don't know not an expert that's what I see um so I would recommend starting by looking for people okay and whether or not you send the connection request right away I'm like I don't really think that's a big deal um but the idea is you want to

start seeing more of the content from people at these companies so as an example I work at Microsoft right if you're like I want to work at Microsoft great you can try to connect with me can follow me whatever if there's someone else you see on your feed that is from Microsoft like connect with them follow them whatever then what I would recommend from there is like you could go right into messaging but it kind of feels like well you know the next question is well what do I say to this person right like hi I'm so and so and I want to work at your company when people say that to me I'm like the UN the unfortunate reality is like if you want to work here the page is you know re.

microsoft.com like go crazy have fun like that's what's available I don't like I don't have the jobs I'm not the job person Microsoft's very big so um and that's what I have I tell everyone right if if you are watching this and you have messaged me and said like hi Nick do you have any like can you tell me what jobs are available I'm just like I will tell every single person it's just the careers page it's all I got um so you I just I don't think that that's like a great opener so then like I said what's how do you open with someone right how do you start this conversation so I generally don't like to rush into suggesting to go DM people and I I am going to come back to this because I've said it this is the second time now

at least but I would start by thinking about the content they're posting you could engage with the content right so if you have if you're there's a software engineer at Microsoft that's posting about the space that they're working in right so they're they do I'm just making something up they do development for one of the platforms and they're talking about some of the technology that's being built like I don't know if you're curious ask questions about it right like hey like you know what was the most exciting part about working on this or like just literally be curious and have a normal conversation this is the kind of thing imagine imagine someone was on the street and they had a shirt on that said like I built I built Xbox on their shirt I actually don't think it would be weird if you were passing

that person you said hey you built Xbox like could you tell me like that sounds so cool could you tell me like what was your favorite part about that like that to me doesn't I mean it might be weird they have a shirt in the first place but my point is that if you if they were advertising I I did this thing I don't think that it would be weird to strike up a conversation about it and that's how I think about networking on social media so that could that could make a good DM hey like someone posted I'm working on Xbox or I'm working on Windows Phone remember that um maybe don't message that person um I'm working on you know I work on Office 365 I don't really talk about uh specific work stuff too much on LinkedIn but if someone's talking about

this stuff if you are intrigued by it genuinely leave a comment send them a message on it but my point here is like just being genuinely curious like sounds sounds neat like what is it like to work on a team that's like that right like and this is the kind of thing where like I said it's kind of just normal conversation and I don't think that people think about it this way because you're probably thinking Nick that sounds like it's going to take forever to get a job like how you're telling me that I'm just going to go look for Microsoft employees pick any company you want to just work at Microsoft so it's easy for me to say it um I want to work at Amazon there's another company right okay so I want to work at IBM so look for IBM employees you're

telling me I just have to like when they post about stuff I just have to be curious and I have to ask them questions and then I'm going to get a job and no you're not like that's not it's not what's going to happen what I'm saying is like it's probably going to take a long time but that's part of networking networking is building up those Rel right there's people that literally just from interacting on social media I know about where they work I know what kind of work they do now I never would have met them otherwise we never would have crossed paths if it wasn't for the internet I've met creators where I collaborate with them now right just it's interesting to talk about different things that we do and like that is now a like a a network effect there a connection

for lack of better word it's a yeah I know it's a LinkedIn term but there's someone in my network and now I'm in this position where if I was like hey I need to get a job there's a bunch of people that I've built up in my network if I was curious I could say hey by the way like we've been you know I've known you for for months now or for years now interacting like this like do you happen to know if anything's available because at that point it's not weird right it's not weird for me that if someone who knows me is like hey could you refer me to a job opening or someone that knows me to say hey man like no you're busy could you could you review my resume like that to that is not weird because I've already built

up this relationship with them so I think what people end up missing is that they're expecting like that they're expecting the result of the relationship without actually building up a genuine relationship and I I realize I'm using the word Rel relationship I don't mean I hope you know what I mean I'm just talking about like human interaction not like not like uh anything beyond that but um yeah I I would approach things as like I'm not telling you to go comment on like every single post from someone and try to praise them and say they're the best I'm just saying try to have normal human interactions with people and I realize it sounds like ridiculous advice because it sounds very simple but I I truthfully think that's all it is so let's be a little bit more specific with an action plan here okay so

we're going to use LinkedIn as a social media platform of choice like I said I think you could do this with Twitter or X whatever it is um it's probably a little weirder on some other platforms like maybe threads or blue sky is actually okay um like in maybe like maybe Instagram but I feel like you're kind of getting into like Instagram and Tik Tok you will find people I don't know my bi like my bias here is like it feels like it's probably more people that are just trying to be influencers and I I realize that sounds bad I don't mean trying to be like trying and failing I mean like that's their goal is like you know I'm just trying to build a following and then I can do affiliate marketing or something like that um I find there's less educational content on

those platforms maybe Tik Tok not so much but um again it's my bias I feel like when there's opportunities for like written posts and I find that there happens to be more educational content but that's been my experience point is pick a platform let's go with LinkedIn what I would recommend from there is I don't know what linkedin's going to start serving you from scratch no idea I also don't know off the top of my head what search options you have available to you what I would do is try to see if you can start getting your feed with some things related to companies plural that you are interested in so if it is Microsoft or Amazon or Facebook or there's a cool startup that you're like hey that would be fun to work at like I'm interested in that see if you can be

searching for that stuff like whether it's hashtags if you can go in and use the search tools to find a random person maybe send a few random connection requests to some people these companies now hopefully you get some stuff to start showing up in your feed but the whole point is you want to get LinkedIn or whatever platform to start showing you stuff from those companies okay so that's that's step one now that you have some of that stuff showing up from there I would start trying to pay attention to the the people that are posting interesting things for you and this might take time I'm not saying you're going to sit down on a Friday night like I'm doing right now and open up LinkedIn and you're going to say perfect I'm going to go connect with all the most important people but it

might take you some time to start forming this okay and then from there I would be genuinely curious I would you know comment on people stuff asking questions that you're curious about maybe send them a message if you if you feel like you have something more to say than like hey I follow you or hey cool post like that you might be able to get away with that I'm putting myself in that situation I'm like I wouldn't know what else to say beyond that it sounds awkward I'm going to avoid it but if you were like hey that was a cool post I really like that you were talking about this topic like do you have any other thoughts on whatever like that's totally fine I would be if I'm on the receiving end of that I would be like hey yeah cool like let's

talk about it like I'm not like I said I'm not trying to be like better than other people I'm not trying to present myself that way but when I get people sending me stuff that's like do this for me I'm like I'm not doing anything for you man like I got stuff to do so start forming your your network that way genuine conversation yes this will take time if you want to this isn't a requirement by any means because I I understand as a content creator I understand like the amount of effort and stuff that goes into to posting regularly and all that if you are interested you could try if like I've made videos on learning in public and stuff um I think that's another way to like amplify some of your Network effect is is to be sharing stuff so if you're like

hey it feels like very tiring to constantly be reaching out and commenting on people's stuff and trying to think about like interesting messages to send them I understand like as someone who is introverted like even the thought of like having to go do that stuff even if it's not spoken like that's yeah that's taxing now to go create content might feel might feel even worse I don't know but I'm trying to present another option for you which is if you have interest if you think there's stuff that's interesting that you're working on or you're learning about like why not post about that right like maybe just I'm making up an ex another example here maybe you want to go work at Amazon and you're like hey like I'm trying to put some stuff on AWS like why you could talk about what you're learning in

terms of AWS make some posts on that you could hash AWS you could tag you know Amazon or like AWS like that usually the big companies have like different accounts broken out for their orgs you could do that kind of thing and then see if that's attracting at least some attention from some people from those companies I'm not saying like you know uh CEO at Amazon's going to go comment on your stuff I just mean like maybe you'll get someone to like it maybe you'll start seeing some of that more from that company showing up in your feed it's just about increasing the surface area for interaction so like I said just another way that you might want to think about trying to build that up um I just want to pull this question up again to see if there's any other detail how should

I go about my first message kind of touched on that right like basically don't just ask for things and I would try in my opinion try to wait until you're like hey I have you you said something interesting or I have a question for you and it would be so nice if you could answer this for me um personally trying to answer a curious like if I sense that someone's being curious about something I feel much more inclined to want to help them I don't know why I'm just I'm just kind of saying like what it happens to be my reality if someone says hi can you do this for me and I don't know them it's immediately like I just don't want to I have other stuff to do I don't want to do it but if someone was like hey Nick like I

was really curious about whatever I I I like I like helping it's not that I don't want to help it's just like how it's presented um if they say hi do you have jobs I'm like careers page like that's that's me helping you because that's all I got but if someone was like Hey like I just to make up an example hi I saw you work in like Microsoft 365 like what does that mean exactly like what is what is Microsoft 365 or like hey like I was curious I saw you work in Microsoft 365 like what do you do there like to me it's a curiosity thing and I'm more inclined to answer that personally so again that's my bias I have to acknowledge that but that type of thing is a lighter weight ask of me and it's not like hi go go

do this thing go submit something for me attach your name to it um reviewing a resume is not like a trivial thing to do um that takes time so anyway I think starting to go in circles now so I'm going to wrap it up but I hope that's helpful um I do highly recommend to folks to to spend time networking online if uh if you can do it in person going to events please do that to whatever you're comfortable with um I think this is sort of an untapped part about searching for jobs people are like hi I'm applying to all these jobs like I'm doing so many a week keep it up but I feel like if you're not taking advantage of any um any networking opportunities like that's just a it's a it's a missed opportunity that might not be immediate but something

that you can be doing over time and and will help tremendously so hope that helps and we'll see you next time take care there