What do we need?
Resume.
Then we just smash it into one of those huge job sites and we wait.
It's a waiting game.
It's gotta be a better way, right?
Now don't get me started on how to craft the perfect resume.
I think most developers are getting this wrong.
I think developers work on their resume more than they
work on their LinkedIn profile.
And I think they work on the personal website more than
they work on their resume.
Wrong, but I've got other videos for that.
So your CV or your resume, or some of your only windows to the world.
Your LinkedIn profile on top of that one.
They are sales documents that are there purely to get you an interview.
Because the market is insane right now, most developers are still getting
interviews despite their best attempts to flush their careers down the toilet.
Amazing times I hear you say.
However, they got to this stage, they got the interview and they're
probably now on the back foot.
When I say they're on the back foot, they're there because the recruiter
or the employer is desperate, desperately looking for talent rather
than getting there because of merit.
You don't want to be arriving to this stage on the back foot trying to
convince someone you're good enough.
You want to arrive there on a forward footing and then just
accept the job offer, right?
Let me tell you, prevention is better than cure.
The path to consistent job offers is kinda that smile and wave boys strategy.
You want to just keep the ball rolling and not raise any flags.
In this market, you're golden.
So now, we need to start strong and that means to get them excited
before we even get to the interview.
You should start building value ASAP, like now.
So now we all know that our lazy CV resume LinkedIn profile starts you off
on the wrong foot, but it gets worse.
Developers are so lazy that we all apply to jobs in the exact same way.
We're all going to the same places.
And more jobs on a jobs board means more people, more
people means more competition.
But if you've got the skills, actually I should rephrase that, if you can showcase
the skills, then, you know, keep going.
If you can showcase them, you've still got a chance, still a little bit of a lottery.
But if you've got a good profile and you can showcase what you can do, you're
still probably going to do quite well.
So if you don't have the profile, if you don't have the experience or just
to hurt me, you're not showcasing those skills, well, firstly, fix that.
Honestly, this is the easiest and most powerful thing you can do for your career.
And it's the start of your asynchronous approach to job searching.
Now, let's start thinking differently.
What else can you do?
Yes, I work for Arc, a great option for remote developer careers, and
I encourage you to take a look.
If I can help you with that, give me a shout, put a message in the
comments, we can talk about that.
However, what else can you do?
Well, you could be proactive and instead of waiting and hoping, you can actually
start doing things for yourself here.
You can make things happen.
So by now, your LinkedIn profile, your resume should be out there
like a beacon of...I think you're starting to get the idea.
So back to proactivity.
What about a saved search on Twitter?
Sure twitter is filled with lots of people, so you might think
that the market is flooded there.
But not a lot of people are using this strategy.
And if you search for hashtags and combinations of hashtags, you can
start to find the smaller companies, the people who don't want to pay
for agencies, or I just try and look to see if they can entice some
developers in from a different channel.
You can set up the saved search and run it every day.
Maybe even feed it into a spreadsheet.
So if you run this search every day and spend 30 minutes going through it,
filtering out most of the recruitment agencies, although those are probably
still worth a look as well, but you could be searching through and find the jobs
that very few people are applying for.
Now some of them will have lots of applicants, but you'll be able to
see which ones have got a massive following, which ones have got
lots of likes and lots of retweets.
You're looking for the ones that don't.
So yes, some of these jobs will be from recruiters and
some will be from employers.
Employers is a golden track.
The reason for that is if they're going direct to the
employer, there's no agency fees.
So while there may be some competition for the role, if your role comes
with a few thousand dollars discount, you're starting to stand
up before you get to the interview.
Nevermind the proactivity.
So think about combining those hashtags.
This is a powerful search.
And I would encourage you to do the same then on LinkedIn.
And yes, you could just type in the hashtags that have the biggest
following, but that's going to give you the biggest amount of competition.
Be very specific about what you want, target it and go directly for it.
If you're not finding anything over a few days or weeks, you
can start to open that out.
But the idea here is to target the niche roles.
So while we're on LinkedIn, let's talk about this search.
So you're searching for, let's say in this example, Node, that's going to bring
up a lot of results, a lot of posts, and a lot of posts means a lot of people.
So why don't we start to have a look at those people?
Where do they work?
Because they're likely to hire people like you because they're hiring people that
are already talking about that subject.
Now, if you want to push this out a little bit further, now you're probably
in Discord groups, Slack communities or you're hanging out and you've got
a little network going on Hashnode or Dev.to all those sorts of places.
And you start to see the same faces or people talking about
the same subject as you.
Where do they work?
Now you can start to look those people up on LinkedIn and find those companies and
see if you can apply directly to them.
So maybe you'll get to their website, possibly even from LinkedIn.
Are they hiring?
Can you find the contact, the right person that might be someone in HR, but
it might be the CTO or even the Tech Lead?
Can you message them directly?
And this is where if you've done the work that I pray you'd been doing from
the start of this, and you've changed your LinkedIn profile when you messaged
them and they do take a look, even just out of general interest, now you're
going to see something pretty positive.
I mean, we could apply this even further and be proactive.
If you find the people working at the companies that you want to work, and you
can see their posts on LinkedIn, you could start documenting your journey as I talk
about on a regular basis, but now you can start to use the hashtag that they're
using so that you pop up on their feed.
And then if you really want to be a ninja about this, you can start running LinkedIn
ads against those people so that you are definitely appearing in their feed.
So no matter where they go, they start seeing you as a name.
So when you eventually apply for a role on their website or message them
directly, they've been seeing you every day for the past few weeks.
Think.
Anyway, what I really wanted to do today was to get you motivated, to
ignite something within you to say, stop being lazy, try something different.
If you're not getting any different results from doing the same things every
day, maybe it's time to change that.
And there's a million ways to be proactive.
I've just giving you a hint at some of them.
And the main thing about this is very few people are actually doing this.
Everyone else is just going to the standard job board and hitting apply.
If you start to do something different, even just slightly different, now
you're starting to stand out and you haven't even got to the entity yet.
You're going to start on a front foot, not on a back foot.
But please do me a favor, a personal favor, I will be forever grateful.
Sort out your resume and sort out your LinkedIn profile.
It'll take you 15 minutes.
I'm even offering to help you for free.
So I hope you're ready to get started.
I hope this one has really hit home.
I'd really appreciate your feedback in the comments and a like if you're so inclined.
And don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell and I'll see you next time.
Take it easy.