Googling your name to get your online image

When you go to the Google website (do we really have to say it’s at www.google.com?), all you have to do is type your name into the search bar and press Enter. As shown in Figure 5-1, the results page displays all the results of your search. You can expect that if you’ve sent your résumé to a company, everyone who’s looked at it have Googled your name.

What they see on the first page of results is what’s going to pre-suade them. The term pre-suasion was coined by social psychologist Robert Cialdini, a best-selling author who is, as of this writing, the Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.

By pre-suasion, we mean that interviewers will convince themselves from what they see on the first page of search results if they want to hire you or not. An interviewer who has seen your search results and is tasked with screening you on the phone will be excited or skeptical about talking with you based on what she sees. If you reach the interview stage, different interviewers will have their own opinions of you even before you utter your first word.

If you want an in-depth explanation of pre-suasion and how to influence people, pick up two books written by Dr. Cialdini. The first, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Harper Business), which was written in 1984, became a classic best seller, and was revised in 2006. The other is Pre-suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade (Simon & Schuster) that was published in 2018. You can view Dr. Cialdini’s website at www.robertcialdinibf.com.

Learning how to rebrand yourself

What do you do if the first page of search results about you makes your stomach churn? Start by opening a notes or spreadsheet app or just (gasp!) get out a piece of paper. Then create two columns: one that lists what you want to see on the first page of search results about you, and the other that lists what’s showing up on the screen.

When you’re done typing or writing, take a look at your list. Do you feel good? Bad? Meh?

This is where your network of friends and perhaps former colleagues can help. Ask them to search for you on Google and get their first reactions to what they’re seeing. Getting extra sets of eyes looking at your results will help you get even better control of your image and how to improve it if you have to.

In appreciation of your friends’ efforts, we suggest you offer to evaluate their first page of results, too. They may appreciate it, but then we don’t really know your friends.

Once you decide that your first page of results needs a makeover, where do you start? Your friends will likely get you moving and offer suggestions whether you want them to or not, because that’s what friends do. We’ll get you moving, too — block out time every day for the next few weeks (yes, really) to create new online resources. For example:

• Create a blog that talks about the programming languages you specialize in. Once you set up the blog, start writing often. For example, you can write tutorial posts about how to solve certain problems you’ve encountered in your experiences to show companies that you’re actively helping others. You can also write your observations and opinions about trends and issues in software development.
• Record and post videos on your YouTube channel that show you in action programming and solving problems. (Today you can find excellent webcams for under $100.) What’s more, consider showing your face on screen because your viewers and companies like seeing who’s giving a presentation. Just be sure to clean up your face and look and dress professionally so that it looks like you’re presenting to a professional audience (such as a group of interviewers).
• Create an online portfolio website that shows off your best work. Just search for “portfolio websites free” (without the quotes) in Google or your favorite search engine to find one you like, such as Squarespace (www.squarespace.com) shown in Figure 5-2. Or you can create a full-blown website to show off your website development skills.
• Have good GitHub and Stack Overflow profiles. These sites are likely to come up high on Google search results for your name because they’re high-profile sites. It takes time to build up these profiles, but the investment may be worth it. Just don’t get so carried away with building up your profiles on these sites that it looks like you spend all day on GitHub and Stack Overflow.

You need to remember two things as you create these new resources. The first is to check job postings for programmers and talk to people about open programming positions, which you learn how to do in Chapter 4. (If you haven’t looked at that chapter, bookmark this page and read Chapter 4 while we take a coffee break.)

When you know what skills companies are looking for, be sure to include those keywords prominently and frequently in your blog, video descriptions, and/or website. Some examples of keywords include:

• Big data
• C#
• Java
• Object-oriented programming
• Polymorphism
• SQL
• Visual Studio

The more a search engine sees your keywords, the more likely it is that companies searching for your name and a particular programming forte will find it on that first results page.

Understanding your visibility online

What’s more, an employer can run background checks and hire private investigators to thoroughly investigate your background, and part of those checks include getting access to your public and/or private social networking profiles.

Even if you don’t think they can find your private profiles, there’s no way for you to know for sure. So, rely on the trite saying “better safe than sorry” and follow our helpful tips for checking and cleaning up your social media profiles before you send out one résumé and cover letter.

Learning what helps get you an interview

Now that you know what won’t help you get an interview, what will?

Start by building a complete LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn takes you step by step toward creating a complete profile and will let you know when you’ve reached the magical 100 percent completion mark. What’s more, LinkedIn tells you where your profile is deficient, and occasionally offers advice for making your profile even better. One of the pieces you need to fill out your profile is a photo, and if you’re going to be taken seriously by any company, you need to have a professional headshot on LinkedIn. If you don’t know how to get one, bookmark this page, read Chapter 15, and we’ll be ready to go when you get back.

Next, what do you need to show in all of your online materials to get an interview?

Removing what can disqualify you in an employer’s eyes

The size of the employer you’ve applied to join may determine what types of information you can have on your social media profiles. Startup and small companies may not be as concerned as larger companies about your questionable choices when you were younger. They may only be interested in your skills and your ability to get their product out fast so that they can secure that next round of funding.

Companies of any size that are more established — that is, have one or more products or services that are bringing in steady revenue — will be more conservative in terms of risk. Established companies have human resources (HR) departments (or an HR company they contract with) and larger companies have their own legal departments.

These companies are well aware of legal liabilities and don’t want to hire people who could invite a potential lawsuit because of their political views, religious views, and/or attitudes toward different races and genders. What’s more, companies will discriminate because humans are hard-wired to do so.

Hiring managers or interviewers may look upon you less favorably because of anything they think means you won’t be a good fit in their company. Even your age may cause a hiring manager to pass on your résumé and there’s no way you’ll know if that’s true, since in most cases companies either won’t contact you or will send you a generic rejection letter.

So, now you know why we’ve told you that you need to be more conservative with your social networking profiles. You shouldn’t hide the fact that you’re a human being, but if you follow our guidelines in this section then you’ll have a far better chance of getting a phone screen and/or interview. (We’re not George Zimmer, so we can’t guarantee it.)

Finding a professional résumé service versus doing it yourself

We recommend you hire a professional résumé service to write or rewrite your résumé. Period. Full stop.

It’s natural to ask if hiring a professional résumé service is expensive. Set aside $300 to $500 for your résumé and cover letter service budget. (You may have to pay more if the service needs to write multiple résumés and cover letters.) Companies that charge in that range will produce a great résumé and cover letter that you can tweak for each job opening and that can lead to better offers and higher pay.

Yes, you can write your résumé yourself instead. The CEO of a company can also learn how to write Python code so that she can do the programming herself and doesn’t have to hire you. Do you think a CEO will do that, or will she focus on what she was hired or started her company to do, which is to grow the business?

If your brow is still furrowed, just open Google, type software developer resume writing service into the Search box, and look at the list of résumé writing services just for programmers. There are so many of them for a reason.

Now that we’ve convinced you to use a professional résumé service (we hope), it’s time to find the right service for you.

Giving your résumé service the right information

A professional résumé service is not a vending machine. You don’t put money into the bill slot and have a résumé tailored just for you come out the bottom slot. The service relies on you to give them information about yourself.

You know the old saying: garbage in, garbage out. If you give your résumé writer garbage, you’re going to have a poor résumé no matter what the résumé service does. When you’re ready to give them information, here’s what to do:

• Give the service every single piece of data you have from your job history in detail, including all your employment dates and job descriptions. Let them pick out what’s important and what’s not.
• Even as you give your service writer everything, be sure to point out what’s important to highlight, especially from a technical perspective.
• Don’t forget to proofread each draft of your résumé after you receive it from the service. You need to ensure there aren’t any obvious errors like the misspelling of a company name and that the résumé reads well, highlights what you want to show off, and includes all the information you need to make a good impression. Yes, there will be multiple drafts because the service writer wants to get your résumé right just as much as you do.

Ask your friends and colleagues to look at your résumé drafts and see if they find anything. Yes, we keep prevailing upon them, but we promise we don’t hate them (though they may have differing opinions of us). Look at it this way — you can tell them (or surprise them) that you’ll pay for a thank-you lunch or dinner after you get your new job and you’re making oodles of money.

Advertising what you have to offer

As you read your résumé, ask yourself: Is this résumé effectively advertising what I have to offer to the company? The last three words in that question are the key to getting to the phone screen or interview stage.

Consider your résumé to be like a car advertisement in a magazine. If you saw an ad for a BMW and the ad asked you to buy one of the company’s cars because it wants to be the greatest, most profitable car company in the world, would you buy it? Or would you be more inclined to buy if they show you a driver with a beautiful significant other sitting alongside you driving on the open road that tells you subliminally that you could have this lifestyle if you buy a new BMW?

Your résumé should also send a subliminal question to the people at the company reading it: Wouldn’t you like to have this software developer working for you who can do all the things you want and more, who’s raised the bottom line of companies he’s worked at in the past, who’s mentored people, and who is a leader in the software development community? If the person reading your résumé is saying “Yes!” in her brain, have your smartphone at the ready to take her phone call or receive her email asking to talk with you.

If a résumé service tells you that you need an Objectives section in your résumé that tells the company what you want, run, don’t walk, away from that service and don’t look back. Today, many companies will automatically disqualify you if they find an Objectives section at the top of your résumé because the company is not interested in what you want out of the job and/or career — they’re interested in what value you give to the company.

Tailoring your résumé to the job description

After you receive your finished résumé, you need to ensure that it can be easily tailored to a particular job description. Unless fortune smiles on you, like the aforementioned new program running the first time, you’re going to send a lot of résumés with cover letters to a lot of companies you think you can help.

That means that every skill you list on your résumé that isn’t in the job description is worthless, and you need to take those out. For example, if you’re applying for a software developer job that requires the applicant to program in Python, the company won’t care if you can program in C++, C#, and Java. That information will show up in the job history section of your résumé, but you need to feature your Python skills and experience prominently and frequently.

If you have your résumé in a Microsoft Word file, don’t keep changing the Word file constantly. Instead, keep that file as your master résumé. When you’re ready to tailor it for a new job application, make a copy of the master file and give it a different name. (Logically, this new filename should include the name of the company you’re applying to.) Keeping a separate résumé for each job application is a big time-saver if a company asks you to send another copy of your résumé. You should also bring printed copies with you to your interview because you can’t presume your interviewers will have a copy with them.

Fitting the cover letter to the job description

It’s easy to find cover letter templates that you can use, but most people who hire new employees, especially experienced ones, can tell which cover letters are generic and which ones aren’t. The generic ones tell the reader about the applicant’s experience and what the applicant wants to do.

A résumé service should be able to show samples of how it fits its cover letter to match a job description. In other words, your cover letter is a companion advertising piece that needs to tell how the company will benefit, not what you want from the job and in your career.

To illustrate what a good and bad cover letter looks like, let’s start with a sample job description:

We are currently in 13 professional sports across 46 states and in 8 countries! We offer daily leagues for fantasy football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, college football, and college basketball. Our mission is to bring fans closer to the games they love via a unique combination of daily fantasy sports, sports betting, and media platforms. We are currently looking for a Senior and Lead Software Engineer to help establish and lead a team centered around the mission of providing a best-in-class experience for our products and customers.

Now here’s an example of a bad cover letter for this position:

I’m excited to talk to you about how my software development skills can benefit your team and how my experience would make me the best fit for this position.

So, what’s wrong with this? The text is generic and feels like a letter that’s used for every single cover letter sent to every company. This text is likely copied and pasted into a new document and the only differences between that new document and any other cover letter is the company’s name and address.

Here’s a much better cover letter to submit for this job posting:

I’m very excited to talk to you about how I can help build and lead a team centered around bringing fans closer to the games they love, as I’m also an avid fantasy football player myself.

This makes it clear that the applicant is applying for this job in particular because he’s restated what the company is looking for specifically and the company’s mission. The approach is much more personal so it’s much more likely to get a response.

Adding the parts of a cover letter you need

We recommend using the popular four-step AIDA model when you write your cover letter. The acronym AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. When you follow these steps in order, as illustrated in Figure 5-3, you’ll end up with a powerful cover letter that will get a company’s attention.