Candid and Cringe

Ep. 006
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[00:00:00] Thuy Doan: So, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Candid and Cringe, a podcast about growth and the rollercoaster of life. Today is the second episode that is brought to you by Patrons on my Patreon. They voted for topics they wanted to see you sooner rather than later, and today's topic is about how social media put me in the position to not have to cold apply for jobs whenever I need them.

[00:00:45] Working title, working title, but, um, continuing on on Patreon while we're here, if you are interested in supporting the podcast, you can do so at [00:01:00] patreon.com/candidandcringe you can sign up for, um, is it called? Yeah, it's called pledging. Basically. It's like a subscription, a membership you can pay as little as $2 a month to support

[00:01:13] the podcast. You'll get, depending on your tier, um, early access to content behind the scenes, full uncut episodes of the podcast, voting power and more as we get there. Today, we are talking about social media and the role that it has had in me landing the jobs that I've gotten in my career. So to give more context on where I'm at with social media these days, I am in a situation where I don't really have to reach out to anybody on LinkedIn in order to have recruiters...

[00:01:57] like it, like in order to get the attention of a [00:02:00] recruiter or an organization. I chalk that up to two things. One is my social presence online and the way that I have approached my personal brand, both unintentionally and intentionally over the years, and also my writing ability, which probably comes from my career in advertising

[00:02:26] and social media before I was a software developer. We're going to talk about three different things, three different, I guess, jobs that I landed in my career. And what aspect of social media got me there. And see how you can set yourself up, if you are in your early career or you are transitioning out of another industry into tech, or you are trying to land a new opportunity, seeing how you can apply those to your own case.

[00:02:59] The first job [00:03:00] that we're going to talk about is my very first job out of college or university, if you're a Canadian listener. When I, so I graduated from business school. I went to business school for four years in my hometown. I can't even remember my major. I think I majored in either human resources or marketing.

[00:03:24] I briefly thought about getting a minor in math. I took calculus for fun when I was there. But in any case I graduated... I graduated in a couple of months after that, I got a job with an advertising agency in my hometown. Prior to that... actually I should give you a context on the job first. So the job that I landed was social media manager, right?

[00:03:47] I was in charge of running the company's social media platforms, um, as well as the platforms of the clients that hired them to manage their social [00:04:00] media. Also, I guess, because it was a smaller company, I had other duties that I took on, like, yeah, I ran social campaigns too, but I also did product, um, copywriting and content writing for the blog.

[00:04:19] So I would ghost write for the blog. So my name wasn't on it. It was just like from name of company. I would write content on there and also, uh, you know, one of our clients sold products and they would give them to us, to me, to come up with the names of the products and come up with the copy to entice people to buy that product, or like to accurately, and delightfully describe what the product is.

[00:04:47] So I did those sort of things. But prior to that, you know, I was just a business graduate, like with no professional social media managing marketing, advertising [00:05:00] experience. Right. So how did I get the job? So I knew nobody at this company. I don't even remember how I learned about this company, but I don't believe I knew anyone at that company.

[00:05:11] Yeah. I definitely didn't know anybody at the company. Someone might've told me about it. I might've seen it on a job board, but either way I did cold apply for that. It was just like, hi, you don't know me. I am interested. Check out my resume please. But the thing that really, um, set me apart from other business grads, or I guess like other candidates was the fact that I had social media management experience,

[00:05:42] that was while not professional, it was experience nevertheless. So here's what it was. While I was in school, I did a lot of extracurriculars and the school was also good at [00:06:00] setting us up for certain classes with practical experience. One of the marketing classes, the professor actually got his class to basically run... do the logistics and the marketing for the film festival in our city.

[00:06:21] Okay. And our team had access to the film festival's Facebook page. And we would like promote films, promote films, promote, promote events, um, you know, run fun campaigns to interact with patrons and all that. And that was about maybe a semester's worth of posts in my so-called portfolio. And that was something that I was able to share with

[00:06:55] the advertising company when I interviewed with them [00:07:00] as, you know, a sample of my experience and they decided to go with me. In this case, what I want to pass on to you is if you are a young listener who's in school and very worried about not having paid experience... I mean, you should be worried about being paid.

[00:07:21] You should, you know, pursue fair payment. But if all you have is like extracurricular experience or experience with your family's company, um, or I don't know... let's say you're trying to be a developer, but all you've done is make websites for your cousin. That's all experience and that's all things that you can say that you've built and that can contribute to your, the value that you're going to add at the company that you're applying for.

[00:07:52] See it as such. Okay. Just because you were not paid doesn't mean that you were not [00:08:00] using your skills to provide value to someone because you were. Think about that. Now, the second time that social media really played, um, really contributed to me landing a job was my first development job. So from my advertising, my stint in the advertising industry,

[00:08:21] I ended up getting laid off after a couple of years because the company at the time didn't have enough clients. Right. They didn't really have a problem with the way that I performed. Um, and I didn't get fired, but it was just like, it basically went like, you know, Thuy, unfortunately we have to let you go.

[00:08:42] Um, You know, here's some severance, dah, dah, dah. Uh, the layoff is, you know, for an indeterminate amount of time. So, you know, find another job. So I got laid off and at some point saw an ad [00:09:00] for a bootcamp in order to become a developer full time in the span of 10 weeks. Right. And I did that. I did that. Now, the situation that I found myself in when I got the job for my ... my first company was, despite the fact that I hadn't had, you know, a permanent developer job prior to

[00:09:34] to that company. company, despite the fact that I didn't really have a portfolio of stuff... like a lot of developers will spend their time building things to show like, you know, like making a to-do list, making a Spotify clone or whatever... I didn't really have those things. So you might be listening to this and thinking, okay, if you didn't have a portfolio and you didn't [00:10:00] have job experience, how did you get the job connection?

[00:10:04] Not even, not even. So what happened was I got recruited. Me. A little nubby nub. A little bootcamp grad who graduated from that bootcamp in like December then spent six more months not in a developer job, getting recruited on LinkedIn. How? So once I got into the company, I wanted to know too, I asked them like, you know what really like, you, you, you keep speaking highly of me,

[00:10:43] and you say that you use me as the prime example for a great junior candidate. Like, what was it like, why did you take a chance on me? Like the recruiter who recruited me was actually pretty new at the company at the time. And he took a chance on it. [00:11:00] Like, maybe he was desperate. I don't know. I've never really asked about that, but like why?

[00:11:05] And he told me that like my LinkedIn profile stood out and another recruiter too, the one that didn't recruit me, he also told me that like my LinkedIn profile is strong. So that was the power of my LinkedIn profile. At that time, the way that I was writing my LinkedIn profile was not mega strategic. Like, I definitely had an opinion of how I should write it in the sense that like, okay, write mostly about the... your experiences and the value that you're going to bring, but then throw in some personal stuff

[00:11:41] at the end. There was that sort of formula that I liked to do that I did before. And I did now. But now that I know that my LinkedIn profile is strong enough to bring in people, without me having to look for them and [00:12:00] like cold message them, like some people do, I deliberately use it to my advantage.

[00:12:10] Right. So I continue with the formula that I have, which is, um, like 80% professional and 20% personal, uh, because I really want to present myself as like a multifaceted human, but competent experienced person. And I use that as a way to set myself up on LinkedIn, to passively pull in interested companies and recruiters without having to do very much.

[00:12:43] And that's like how LinkedIn has served me. If you are somebody who is, you know, pivoting from another industry to the tech industry or your, a fresh out of school student looking for your first [00:13:00] job and you don't have a lot of job experience yet something that I will recommend on top of strengthening your LinkedIn profile, you know, as a passive way to bring people to you is to look for jobs on angel.co

[00:13:17] A N G E L dot C O. That site has a bunch of jobs on it from startup companies. So they are... I think their opportunities are better suited to individuals who don't have a lot of experience yet. Or who are willing to, you know, temporarily take lesser favorable conditions, um, on the journey to a company that will actually suit them.

[00:13:50] And what I mean by that is, you know, maybe you do want to work for a bigger company, but you're having a hard time finding one and you need the money or you want the [00:14:00] experience. You can certainly look for short-term contract jobs, with smaller companies, with smaller budgets, um, in order to get, you know, just enough experience to show to your potential employer.

[00:14:18] Why? Like, why that instead of like making projects on the side. Although there are short term contracts th... that's like real world experience in the sense that like, you had to look at somebody's code base, a code base that you didn't write, and then make sense of it and add to it or adjust it. And that's slightly more valuable than when you create a product from scratch.

[00:14:48] It's still valuable when you do that. I wouldn't say don't do that, but if you can get short-term contract work, do it. So if you're a freshie, LinkedIn, beef it [00:15:00] up and make an account on angel.co. Now, there is a difference between that advertising job and my first developer job with a way that I was approaching social media and my personal brand and the way that I'm approaching it

[00:15:13] now. I'm much more intentional now and I can probably bring in even more opportunities the way I am now than I used to be. Um, and I'll tell you what has changed. So back in the day, even when I had,

[00:15:32] well, it was probably before my lifestyle blog, before I had, I started creating content from my perspective, like intentionally creating content, I was just somebody who was an avid user of social media and an early adopter of social media. Right. I was somebody who really liked to share my experiences, my thoughts and my [00:16:00] feelings, right.

[00:16:01] Whether or not anybody interacted with them, it was very, um, therapeutic for me to be able to express myself somewhere. That was like almost wholly mine. Um, and I became known for certain things just by shouting into the ether. Right. So for example, I used to, um, well actually I still do it. I post a lot, like anytime I go to a new restaurant, I like to like at base post pictures of the food that I'm eating.

[00:16:34] And then sometimes if I'm feeling up to it, I like critique... not in like a famous food critic sort of way, but I'll just say like, Ooh, I loved the lemon poppy seed cake, the texture, dah, this dish try that. Didn't really like this, you know, and just like a candid, um, retelling of my food experience. And eventually I became known as a [00:17:00] foodie and I wasn't even, I wasn't even presenting myself as a foodie.

[00:17:04] I never described myself as a foodie, but what my consistent and frequent posts in a particular area did was get me known as the person that talks about this or the person that knows a lot about this or the person that has a lot of experience about that. Right. And now I have that in my mind when I post things in the sense that like, uh, if, if I post a lot about this.

[00:17:35] People will come to know me as the person that believes in this or talks about that or has experience with that. I don't do it because of that, but I now have the awareness that that is how people will perceive me. And if I need to use it to my advantage, you know, in my career, I will. Um, so back then I used to post like pretty, like I had a [00:18:00] good personal brand, but it was entirely unintentional.

[00:18:02] Um, Now, nowadays, what has changed is I've moved from being a developer, like just a pure developer engineer software engineer, to somebody who works in a field called developer experience in this field. Another name for it you might have heard is developer relations or developer advocacy. What those are... like developer relations is kind of...

[00:18:33] you could say is synonymous with developer experience, but developer advocacy or developer advocates is like a subset of developer experience, but it's basically a field, um, in develop, you know, in the developer industry that focuses on making developers' experiences with product better, okay? And [00:19:00] what that typically involves is you, a developer creates content or builds things in order to help other developers build cool things., build things that they were already building with more confidence. Build things with less friction. Understand things better.

[00:19:27] And in general, just have a better time building stuff. Another way that you could think about it is, is a developer, a person working in developer experience is almost like a developer influencer. Um, but in its best form, people who work in developer experience are the bridge between a product or a company and the community that uses

[00:19:56] that product or companies' stuff. So [00:20:00] you are in touch with the community and what they like and what they dislike about a product. And you ideally are able to make their experience better, the consumers, the users, by relaying that information to the company and getting the company to act in a way that benefits users.

[00:20:22] Right. And not just... you know, adopt our product, buy, buy, buy. It's not like that. So I made that transition. Um, and a part of making that transition successfully is having a presence online, definitely helps, um, and having content, creating things that are of value to people. Can you become a developer experience person without an online press?

[00:20:55] I doubt it. Like maybe you could, I think, uh, you can [00:21:00] become one without social media presence, but to not be present online at all. No, because you have to be creating something on the web for people to consume that will help them. Right. So to get my current developer experience job, I started being more intentional about my brand.

[00:21:24] Or about the content that I was putting out. Right. Because what I lacked when I decided I wanted to make the switch is content that was helping people and, uh, portfolio demonstrating those things. Right. And the thing that really got me, aside from a referral... I did get a referral from someone, which, you know, all of that, that really does is let me bypass the black hole of resumes...

[00:21:58] but aside from that, what really helped [00:22:00] me in my interview with my current company was I had a portfolio of things that helped other people, like technical content, non-technical content, and putting that on a social platform called Polywork which is like, a more colorful, in depth version of writing your accomplishments on LinkedIn, except it's not as stuffy and it's not as labor intensive as managing a website.

[00:22:33] Okay. And on there you can post the things that you're working on and. Your accomplishments and you can group them into things called collections, which you can think of as like Instagram highlights. Um, for example, if you post like some blogs and some podcasts and some talks, you can create collections like talks and blogs and so on and so forth.[00:23:00]

[00:23:00] And I was able to use that to one share with other people as a portfolio, or be a window where someone could view a glimpse of my experience and my value and come to me about opportunities, right? And it's a combination of all of those things. You know, my strong LinkedIn profile, my presence on Twitter, my blogs on dev dot T O, talks that I've done at conferences,

[00:23:38] and maybe someday my podcast will contribute to new opportunities. But it's all of those things where I'm being intentional online about the stuff that I care about, about the stuff that I work on about the things that I don't tolerate, about the things that I believe in... it's all [00:24:00] of those things that have led me to

[00:24:05] the jobs that I have had and the job that I have now, with as little friction as possible. Now there are other things that make that process easier. Of course, like if you have connections, if you have referrals, if you can afford to quit your job, if things don't go well there, if you have enough money saved in order to dedicate to the job search...

[00:24:32] those all definitely contribute. But it's this like insider hack that I heard from my former workplace that really caused me to be intentional about it. Like other than the fact that I needed to showcase things, to get this developer experience job, I learned about this. So there are some, usually people with more experience...[00:25:00]

[00:25:00] I don't want to say, I don't want to limit it to just seniors, but people with more experience, if you have a strong enough presence online, and I don't just mean like you shout about your hobbies online, but if you have a strong enough presence online, like your work is very visible, your value is very visible.

[00:25:23] It can be easier for you to bypass parts of the interview process, um, because you can lean on those very visible, uh, snippets of your value online. So for example, at my former company, they told me that there was a person who, when they were interviewing, said no to the technical test and was like, listen, my work, my code is online.

[00:25:51] Examples of my coding ability are online. You can look at it. Um, I will not do the technical test. [00:26:00] They may have said that they don't have the time, whatever they said. They basically used their, um, work online as leverage to not do the technical test slash not waste time. Do the technical test. I thought that was sick.

[00:26:18] Awesome. I would love to have that much power. Um, From a technical standpoint, like I would love to have that power as a pure developer. Like I definitely have some of that power with content, um, on the developer experience side of things. But if, if ever someday I decided that developer experience wasn't for me, or I wanted to switch it up and go back to pure engineering,

[00:26:42] I would love to be able to just lean on my GitHub or my workshops that I might do down the line or demo projects or whatever, I would love to be able to lean on that stuff and say, Hey, I don't have the time. [00:27:00] Uh, I think it's inefficient. I don't want to do it whatever. And be like, you can look at my code examples online and assess me from there.

[00:27:08] And if that doesn't work for you, then I'm sorry. I don't think that we're a fit. I would love to have that. And I think the sooner that you get ahead of that, the sooner that you can leverage the information that you put online to your advantage, there is a school. So lately with bootcamps, it's kind of hit or miss, uh, it's all, it seems like most of them are a mess.

[00:27:37] I've seen a lot of drama about one bootcamp school that I will not name, especially mostly because I can't remember what, but there is a school that recently got outed for fake um, what's it called? Graduate, uh, success percentages, like, you [00:28:00] know what percentage... so bootcamp, they tend to put out a report saying like, what percentage of their students got jobs after a certain time period.

[00:28:07] Like post bootcamp. And one school was found out to have like, made that shit up. Okay. And if not, a lot of schools have bad stats for that, and people have trouble getting jobs. Now there is one school that I hear really good things about in the Toronto area. They are called Juno College I think formerly called Hacker U, but Juno College is the only bootcamp that I've heard that actually sets people up to have a strong, uh, social media, online presence, learning in public thing from the beginning.

[00:28:50] Why... do I know this? Well online on Twitter, mostly on tech, Twitter, I've seen many Juno College [00:29:00] graduates and, uh, students and alumni who put in their bio that they're like currently a Juno College student and they are cohort, 25 cohort, 30 cohort, whatever. And they have a lot of pride and a lot of presence online, uh, with the fact that they are a student that is learning.

[00:29:22] At the bootcamp that I went to, they did not do that. We just like learned HTML, you know, briefly HTML, CSS. Most of it was JavaScript. Most of it was React. A little bit of database, like deploy stuff, but that's what they focused on. But Juno College not only do they focus on a curriculum like that, but they also set people up...

[00:29:49] um, to be in a position where, when the time comes for them to get a job, they will have an easier time because they built a network of people [00:30:00] who they have good rapport with, who have seen them learning every day, every week, and who will hopefully root for their success when the time comes or have the connections to learn, to hook up.

[00:30:18] Or whatever. Juno College is the only bootcamp that I've seen that does that. And so if anybody were ever to ask me what they should do to set themselves up for success in the early stages, like aside from, you know, things like, you know, make an angel.co account and on get your LinkedIn bio in order... aside from that, just learn in public.

[00:30:46] Learn in public, do it on Twitter tech... the tech community is very active on Twitter among like all the social media platforms. Very active. On LinkedIn, the people that you're going to run [00:31:00] into are recruiters, but they are not the only people who can give you an in on, like for the job. You can get an in

[00:31:11] by fostering genuine relationships with people, with peers or your seniors in the same field, senior developers online on Twitter, you know, fostering relationships with them, learning from them, sharing, swapping knowledge, um, being very candid about the things that you don't understand, being very candid about the things that you are learning and that.

[00:31:40] That has gotten many people jobs, including early career developers. Okay. So today the takeaways are be intentional about your presence online, be [00:32:00] intentional about how you share the things that you're learning. Do it more if you're not doing it at all? Um, it is definitely exercise in ego, which, you know, I have struggled with. But people like to work with people who understand that there are humans that don't know everything and don't portray themselves as perfect or all knowing

[00:32:36] or have the answer all the time. We want to work with people who we feel comfortable with asking questions, right. And spending like eight hours a day with even though it's online. Right. And you can present yourself and in a way that's competent and also [00:33:00] approachable if you are intentional about it online.

[00:33:03] And if you're transparent about it. Okay. So LinkedIn for the recruiters. For a passive way to get recruiters, to come to you. Twitter for peers in your community, rapport building. Angel.co for short-term contracts, you know, while you're in between jobs or while you're looking for the one. And Polywork Polywork is new. It's in beta.

[00:33:34] You do need an invite code, but if you want to try it out, uh use code clearlythuydoan. C L E A R L Y T H U Y D O A N. Use that code. It's my VIP code. And you can bypass the wait line waitlist and, you know, use your Polywork profile. Don't sweat the whole, I need to build my own website thing. No. You [00:34:00] need to, all you need to do is to be able to show your skill and experience.

[00:34:08] And it does not have to be in the form of I made my own website. No, if you feel like your site, like building a custom site from scratch is holding you back, make a Polywork profile. Even if you just use it in the interim. Make one, don't let that hold you back. I know a girl who is looking for a job and she wanted to see what my resume looked like and all that stuff.

[00:34:37] And I was like, you know, I shared with her my resume, but I'm like, what I think you should do is make a Polywork profile and use that as your portfolio. D... like cool. If you want to build a website, I still do. Do it, but don't wait to apply just because you're trying to build your website. Polywork. I really [00:35:00] like Polywork because on LinkedIn, I feel like it's very stuffy.

[00:35:04] Like, I don't feel like I can post my podcasts about like, burnout and, uh, mental health struggles or IVF on there. Like it's very, like, some people kind of use it as Facebook and there's even people that hit on other people on LinkedIn, but ultimately like of all the social platforms, it's the stuffiest

[00:35:29] Okay. Um, so you, you feel kind of censored on LinkedIn. On the opposite end is something like Twitter, where people are just like shouting into the void, like talking about their favorite, favorite Doritos flavors, or, you know, uh, piling onto some person, you know, ratioing people on there. But as... like Twitter is my favorite platform personally, but the problem with it from a showcasing your work standpoint is it's [00:36:00] very unorganized and it moves very fast and tweets get buried

[00:36:05] really quickly. So you need a more organized approach to sharing the things that you want to share than Twitter, but something that's less stuffy than LinkedIn and Polywork is a platform that does do that. With Polywork if you do make an account, what it looks like is... visually it look uh, also uses a timeline format like Twitter does...

[00:36:28] but it uses, like I mentioned before, collections, like Instagram highlights in order to organize your posts. So it's not like a cluster of posts. And because Polywork's brand is very much like you are multifaceted, share all aspects of you, and all the things that you're working on, from crocheting to live streams, to a serious article that you wrote... you can do all of that [00:37:00] on there.

[00:37:00] And that's what I really like about Polywork. Okay. I hope that if you are struggling to get a job, um, whether your early on in your career or your mid career or your later career, or whatever that you, if you're not already using social media as leverage in your job search, do it, do it. Um, and I hope that really, really helps you.

[00:37:29] If there's anything else that you want to know about social media, please feel free to message me on Patreon. Comment on posts or tweet at me on, uh, at Candid and Cringe and we can talk more about it. Happy, happy job hunting.[00:38:00] .