Search in book...
Toggle Font Controls
Create new playlist

Name your new playlist

Playlist description (optional)
Sign In

Email address

Password

Forgot Password?

or

Continue with Facebook

Continue with Google
Sign Up

Full Name

Email address

Confirm Email Address

Password

or

Continue with Facebook

Continue with Google

Chapter 14

Networking for Opportunities

In This Chapter

Using real-world networking

Networking online

Creating a stellar resume

Using LinkedIn

So you’re ready to look for work. You’ve determined that coding would be a good fit for you (Part I), found different ways you can learn to code (Part III), and created a portfolio site (Chapter 13). How do you proceed?

The natural temptation for a web developer is to use an online job site to look for something suitable. However, as I explain in this chapter, online job sites are useful but perhaps the least effective way to get a job. To put it briefly, you’re better off when people are contacting you (such as executive recruiters); when people know you (such as former colleagues and others in your network); or when you simply get a promotion or internal transfer.

In this chapter, I explain all these ways of getting a job, with tips and tricks for maximizing your chances.

Networking in the Real World

One effective way to network in the real world is simply to do a good job in your current role. Get things done on time; show respect to your colleagues and help them get their own tasks done; introduce new ideas and new technologies at appropriate times; and keep the overall project’s goals, not just your own goals, in mind as you do your work.

This approach helps generate a friendly and productive atmosphere across your team. Team members steadily become extremely productive reference sources for each other. Whenever one of the team members gets a new job — in your current company or at a new company — the first thing she wants to do is to hire her favorite members from a previous team. If you play your cards right, this could mean you.

Networking has developed a bad reputation in many circles as an empty exercise of people who barely know each other rushing to exchange business cards and pushing each other for contacts and job recommendations. Don’t do this. However, do make ongoing efforts to stay connected to, and on a positive basis with, people with whom you work closely or who do similar work to you, both in and outside your company.

Figure 14-1 shows networking tips from CIO, a media company that caters to IT leaders. Although the article is titled “12 Tips for Shy People,” these tips are good, top-level ones for anyone. You can find them at j.mp/cionetworkingtips.

Figure 14-1: CIO has many good introductory networking tips.

People with a technical mindset tend to assume that you have to know someone well to be an effective networking contact for them. But studies show that looser connections can be even more effective in job searches. Definitely strive to make strong connections with your core project colleagues, but remember that it’s also worth the extra effort to reach out to — and make a good impression on — more distant connections.

Here are some effective networking targets from closest to you to further away:

Your core team: Everyone you work with on a daily basis should have good things to say about you.
Other teams that your team works with: You and your team will have a reputation for being easy to work with or not, creative or not, focused on meeting deadlines or not. Strive to establish a good reputation for yourself and for your team as a whole.
People right across your department: For instance, in departmental meetings or on internal discussion boards, make the effort to make useful, constructive, incisive comments every now and again. By doing so, you show that you are at the top of your game and are willing to make an effort to contribute to larger discussions.
People with your same job description or technical focus: Use professional group meetings and online gathering places for people in your profession or who use specific technologies as a place to constructively work out new ideas and offer opinions.
Professional conferences: Seeing and being seen at professional conferences is a boost to your networking efforts. And snagging a speaking slot or a seat on a panel every so often should be a big boost to your career.

Networking in your current company

Effective networking begins in your current job and at your current company. The core effort that makes networking work doesn’t fall under the traditional definition of networking: doing a great job in your current role.

The next step, though, starts to move into the definition of networking: finding ways to let people know that the good work is happening. Casual mentions by you, followed by positive comments from coworkers or your manager, can accomplish this.

You can take specific steps to network in your company:

Say hello: Learn to say hello to people on a casual basis. This habit can do a lot to make the workplace more comfortable.
Ask others about their work: Find out what other people do and what problems they’re facing. Starting a conversation can give you opportunities to help and can inspire others to ask you the same in return.
Speak up in meetings: Make helpful comments and share your opinion in meetings.
Use internal and customer service bulletin boards: More and more companies have internal bulletin boards so employees can network as well as customer-facing bulletin boards for solving customer problems. Contribute on these platforms.
Join non-job-related company groups: Most companies have voluntary teams for pursuing broad goals and for building skills, such as an internal Toastmasters club to share efforts at learning public speaking. These groups are great networking venues.
Get mentors: A mentor is a senior person who takes an interest in your career and gives you inside tips and other advice. As someone interested in coding, consider having two mentors: one technical, for helping you build up your skills, and one organizational, for helping you look for new jobs or a promotion in your current company.

Love the one you’re with

The best way to get a great new job is to be good at and widely recognized in your current job. It’s common for people to try to solve being unsatisfied, unproductive, and unhappy in their current job by looking for a new job. Finding for a new job is one solution, but it can come with its own problems.

When things are going poorly in your current job, you’re less confident, less likely to get strong recommendations, less likely to be developing with new technologies, and therefore less likely to put forth a strong resume or interview well.

All this turns around when you’re doing well in your current job. Doing well also makes you more likely to be headhunted — contacted by executive recruiters — and contacted by managers at your current company for new opportunities.

So, ironically, the single best strategy for getting a great new job is to do well at your current job. Until you can be with the one you love — that exciting, high-paying new job with great benefits, where you use all the latest technologies — do your best to love the one you’re with.

In-company networking is key to all your networking efforts. People outside your company will view people in your company as credible sources about you. People inside your company, but not on your work team, view people on your work team as credible sources about you. Build your network, and your credibility, from the inside out.

Networking outside your company

As mentioned, the traditional view of networking is a sad effort where people meet at a semi-social event and try to use that connection to get each other to employ their networks to get themselves a new job. And this can seem most desperate outside your company, where you probably don’t know many people.

Three touches to sell

One of the things that’s hardest for technically oriented people to understand is the confusing way that selling works — especially when the product is you.

First, people are inherently sales-resistant, so they often have to hear something several times before it even begins to break through.

Second, one source is rarely enough to convince people. They like to hear news — good or bad — from several sources before they believe it. This issue is separate from the repetition issue; hearing something from the same source three times doesn’t cover the “variety of sources” concern.

Third, the usual marketer’s beginning guess for number of repetitions — the number of times that someone has to hear something before he or she begins to believe it — is three.

So, for people to understand that you’re a top contributor, they should hear this three times, from two or three different sources.

For instance, you can gently let people know that you accomplished some goal (one repetition); give a talk or write a paper, so that the conference or meeting or publication appears as an endorser of your expertise (second repetition); and count on coworkers or your manager to say good things about you to others (third repetition).

More is better, of course, so don’t limit yourself to three repetitions. But targeting three is a good first step.

When networking outside your company, take a low-key approach. Don’t appear desperate by trying too hard.

Create an elevator pitch; your name, job title, and a couple of well-known people with whom you work. Also mention the key technologies you use.

Then use the pitch. Look for people with whom you can follow up due to shared job or technical interests. Connect with them through a brief email and on LinkedIn, described later in the section “Following the Rules for LinkedIn.”

Educational settings are great opportunities for networking, with fellow students and instructors as well. Use your elevator pitch when needed, but also take the opportunity to go deeper. The long and in-depth conversations you can arrange to have, such as before or after class over coffee, can form relationships that help you, and your new friends, throughout your careers. And start building bonds with career services people; these connections can be helpful well beyond your first job out of college.

Be active in alumni groups too. They offer the kinds of broad connections that can be helpful in finding new opportunities.

Meetup.com groups, code-a-thons, and mentoring for young people are additional opportunities to network, and also offer the chance to make new friendships that are personally as well as professionally meaningful to boot.

Building Your Online Network

One of the great conundrums of modern life is how one’s online life interacts with one’s real life, where you see and interact with people in person. At best, the two realms support each other. You have a lively, interesting real life, supported by lively and interesting interactions online.

If you’re better known, better respected, and having more fun in your online life than in your real life, that’s not a bad thing. You want to be having a positive experience in both realms, so if you’re rocking it online, that’s one down and one to go.

As a coder, however, your technical interests and breadth of interest can make it easier to be a big shot online than in person. If this happens, how can you bring that strong persona into your real-world life?

Use these tips to help you build a strong network in both worlds, online and off:

Go for a two-fer: Try to be well known and well regarded in both your online and real-world lives. Don’t settle for one or the other.
Match your online technical focus with your working life: If you work with Python every day but blog about Ruby, your personas aren’t supporting each other. Try to spend your online time and your real-world time on the same topics. Either change your online focus or move to a different job that matches your current online focus.
Overlap your online friends and your work friends: Ask your work colleagues where they hang out online. Try hanging out there too. You can do good mutual reputation building if your online and work lives overlap.
Prioritize work: When in doubt, put more energy into your work than into your online life. (And much more than into nonproductive online pursuits such as dating sites and online games.) Work can and should be rewarding in many ways, and you can help yourself make it so by putting work first.
Reduce screen time: Studies show that sitting — a necessity for logging screen time — is actively harmful to your health. All coders need to move around more. So cutting screen time in favor of moving around — and even getting outside — will be better for you, even for your career, over time.

Sites such as Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) and https://stackoverflow.com are frequently visited by developers. You can build your reputation on these sites by answering questions, submitting links to interesting articles, and commenting on contributions made by others.

Creating a Winning Resume

The last few years have seen a lot of attention on resumes. Some people advocate for a functional resume — a list of skills and skill areas, with occasional mentions of dates and employers. Others tell you that your resume has to be a single page.

However, the operative standard for a printed resume, or a resume in Word or PDF format, seems to be an old-fashioned, chronological resume, two pages long, with a summary statement at the top (optional) and educational background at the bottom (required).

If you are short on experience, consider fitting your resume on one page, and putting your educational accomplishments at the top.

For an online resume, you simply transfer the printed resume to an online format. For an online resume you no longer have to worry about keeping it to exactly two pages, but otherwise, the format for an online resume is exactly the same.

In the following sections, you learn how to create a strong chronological resume, ready to print — and then how to use it to create a strong presence on LinkedIn.

Being a 10xer

The concept of a 10x employee has recently gained widespread popularity. If you can be seen as a 10xer in any role, your chances of moving to the top of the salary and opportunity pyramid skyrocket.

The idea behind 10xers was widely popularized in the famous programming book The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks (Addison-Wesley). In this classic, Brooks labels as a lie the idea that a stalled programming project can be kick-started simply by throwing more people at it — especially by throwing more mediocre people at it.

Brooks says that adding people causes an exponential increase in the time everyone spends communicating instead of getting things accomplished. The best communication, according to Brooks, is inside the heads of the most talented individuals, who were ten times more productive than the least. Next most effective is informal communication in a small, experienced, talented team.

More recently, it’s been observed over and over that adding just one highly talented software developer, designer, or writer to a troubled project can put it back on track almost overnight. This highly talented individual races through backlogs of project tasks and succinctly communicates his or her needs and helpful new ideas to relieved colleagues.

Being a 10xer is a more intense version of the idea that being happy in your current job is the best way to ease the way into a new one. If you can be a happy, super-productive employee — a 10xer — you’re likely to find getting your next great job very easy indeed.

Making a print resume stand out

Your print resume needs to be a minor work of art.

Yes, the world has changed. It’s highly likely that your “print” resume will rarely be printed. Instead, it will be viewed onscreen. But it’s still important that it looks great so that it is easy to scan and read.

Follow these rules to make your print resume stand out:

Format it carefully and consistently: Your resume should look polished and professional even before anyone reads it. If you need to, find a sample resume online, and then type your own information into the format. Also, your resume should be consistent — for example, if you use bullet point descriptions or bold font for company names, make sure all descriptions are bulleted and all company names are in bold font.

Don’t overdo the formatting in your resume. Companies often use automated software to scan your resume, and this software can experience issues processing resumes that have text in headers or footers and tables, images, or logos.
Proofread it carefully: Your resume has to be perfect. Everyone knows this — or, at least, everyone believes it — so errors on your resume are seen as evidence of extreme carelessness and cluelessness. Make sure there are no errors.
Then, proofread it again: You can’t proofread your resume too many times. Also get others to proofread it for you. Even if there are no actual spelling errors, out-of-date information can come across as an error too.
List jobs in reverse chronological order: Start with the most recent, and go back in time. Include the company name, month, and year of the start and finish dates, the city, and several lines about what you did in the job. Each job description can have four to six bullet points, with each bullet point no more than two lines long and fewer bullets for roles earlier in your career.
Include buzzwords: It’s crucial that you include key buzzwords in the resume text. HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Ruby on Rails, SQL, Backbone.js — these are just some of the buzzwords you want to be sure to include, wherever they apply.
Include a skills section: Consider listing current skills in a separate section at the top. That makes it a lot easier for an HR person to quickly scan your resume to see if it’s worth further consideration for jobs that require specific skills.
Include accomplishments: List important accomplishments that you achieved on your own or as part of a team. Include what you did, and highlight leadership, teamwork, and technical ability.
Include helpful dollar figures: Words like “$5 million project” can be helpful; “I saved the company $2,123.92” are not. Put in significant dollar figures in round numbers where you think they might help, and then check with a trusted friend about whether they actually do.
Make sure your key attributes are reflected: If you exemplify an attribute, make sure your resume reflects this. For example, if you’re detail oriented, put this in the Summary section — and then make sure that your accomplishments reflect a person who’s detail oriented. “Created a large SQL database that worked flawlessly in just two months, saving $5 million in inventory costs” is a statement that says detail oriented without having to use the actual words.
Don’t automatically list all jobs: In the older sections of your resume, you can cut off your job list at a certain point, rather than go all the way back to the start of your career. Many people list only about ten years’ worth of jobs to keep the resume length reasonable, reduce the presence of outdated technologies on their resume, and reduce the possibility for ageism in the hiring process.

For better or worse, anyone reading your resume will tend to guess that you were about 22 when you got your bachelor’s degree, if any. There’s no easy way to avoid this assumption.
Try for one page, use two pages if needed: People like a resume that fits on one single sheet of paper, front and back, chock-full of information — but without using extra-small type or narrow margins. If you’re new in your career, though, don’t strain to fill the space. Don’t go over one page unless you have a lot of accomplishments.
Print it: Print your resume periodically. Make sure it looks great printed, and proofread the printed copy. You can more easily spot errors on the page than on the screen.
Tweak it: For each specific job, create a new version of your resume with the relevant buzzwords from the job description — especially at the top of the resume.
Get advice: Do the best job you can on your resume, and then get an experienced professional or friend to weigh in. In addition, your university career services office may be able to help.

If you don’t have access to career support on your own or through university alumni, use a site such as www.evisors.com to hire a professional to do a review for you for less than $100.

You’re likely to use your resume again and again during your career. It’s worth taking care to create and maintain a strong resume.

Following the rules for LinkedIn

LinkedIn has several different functions. It can be a simple resume-hosting service. Or you can add recommendations and comments, making your resume the centerpiece of a little online community focused on you.

You can also join various groups and networks on LinkedIn, building up your reputation. For technical people such as web development pros, a certain degree of cool is attached to being low-key. Using LinkedIn as a simple resume-hosting service might be for the best.

Figure 14-2 shows the LinkedIn profile of a career-changer, Helin Shiah, who switched from finance to web development by going through a code school called Dev Bootcamp. Note how her tech experience includes references to live projects she built that cover a range of technologies. You can see Shiah’s LinkedIn profile at www.linkedin.com/in/helinshiah.

Figure 14-2: Shiah links to her LinkedIn profile on her resume and blog.

Keep these thoughts in mind when using LinkedIn:

Make the summary count: A recruiter should be able to tell whether you’re a good candidate just from the summary. Write your summary carefully and be thorough.
Keep your overall resume inclusive: When you apply for a specific job online, you can tailor your resume to the job description. On LinkedIn, you need to cover all the bases — a single resume has to attract all kinds of employers.
Go short: Keep descriptions short. It’s harder to read online than in print, so a smaller amount of detail goes a long way on LinkedIn.
Go long: You don’t need to trim your list of jobs to keep within a page limit.
Give recommendations: Give LinkedIn recommendations to the people you know best or who recommend you.
Include some personal info: List some interests outside work. What you do outside work, especially for your community, helps people see beyond the online profile.
If you’re free to travel, say so: Many employers want to know that you’re free to travel at least some of the time. If you can travel at all, add “free to travel as required” to your resume. You can back out if the travel demands of a job are too much. If you’re not free to travel, just don’t mention it.
Update the Skills section: Put your strongest skills in the Skills section. You can include up to 25, but it’s best to include only those you feel most confident in. That way, you get a follow-up from recruiters who use keyword search to filter resumes on only your best skills, avoiding a disappointing waste of time all around.

As with your printed resume, your LinkedIn profile may get a lot of attention during your career. Take the time to make it strong and useful.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.

Table of Contents for Chapter 14: Networking for Opportunities

Create new playlist

Sign In

Sign Up