Are you looking to learn how to get your first cloud architect job without experience? Well,
then this video's for you. Please subscribe and hit the bell to be informed of new cloud
computing videos every Wednesday. Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I've been working in
technology for 25 years and during this time I've been mentoring people, whether it be
in networking, security or cloud computing, and there's a lot of lessons we learned about
how to help people get their first job and we're here to give you some of those lessons.
In today's episode, we're going to be talking about getting experience, but we're going
to be talking about getting it through internships, because internships and volunteer work can
be an amazing way to get some experience and in many cases, if you do it right, get hired
from the internship and have your first job.
We're going to talk about how to find the best internship or how to create an internship
and what to look for in the internship, and then how to do the internship in a way that
by the end of the internship, you're either likely to get a job there or that internship
will reach out to a friend and help you get a job somewhere else. So that's what we're
going to talk about. So, as I mentioned, when you have no experience, you've got to stand
out from the crowd. You've got to be better, and this is all about being better. So an
internship has a chance to get some experience, but don't just take any internship, take something
that's going to make you better. So things to look for the internship are, how will that
internship give you increased depth and knowledge? Remember, anybody can click boxes, but I want
you to have knowledge.
I want you to be a cloud architect and you can't be an architect if you don't know how
things work. So look for something that's going to give you deep knowledge. Think about
how that internship will teach you how to create cloud architectures because your goal
is to be a cloud architect. So you're going to need something that's going to do that.
So if all day long, you're editing a [inaudible 00:01:56] template. That's great for maybe
a container, but it's not going to necessarily teach you how to become a cloud architect.
So find out what you're going to be doing. How will the Internship improve your written
and your verbal communication skills? Longterm success is more about, can you communicate?
How do you speak? How do you write? The soft skills you have when you interact with others.
So you should learn that too from your internship, in addition to just technical competency.
Your first job was about technical competency, but longterm success is about soft skills
and we're going to talk a lot more about soft skills in the future. So make sure the internship
is not a one size fits all approach. And I interview a lot of interns and the ones that
say, "What's the structure like? What's the structure like? I need more structure." And
I say, "I'm sorry, you're not right for this internship." And they're like, "Why?" And
I say, "All of my interns have different backgrounds. I have people from sales. I have people from
engineering. I have people from digital marketing and I have people from networking and security
and even some from cloud computing, everyone has different experience." And I want them
to share their experiences with each other.
But for someone that used to work in sales, I have to give them a very different internship
than for someone that's basically worked in cloud computing or for someone that's worked
in networking. It's different for everybody. So my recommendation is to find something
that's going to have a little structure, but make sure it's very flexible. Something where
they have you in mind, that you're doing work for them, which helps them, but they're going
to build a plan for your personal development. And when we talk about how to create your
own internship, this is one of the things that we're going to hope you do. So find whoever's
running the internship and you can research these things. LinkedIn is a great platform
for that. Ask others, find what that manager's like. Is this manager someone that likes to
teach? Every time when I manage a project or people, one of the biggest things that
I did was train them.
I thought, "My God, if I can make my people better, I'm going to do better." And personally,
I just love to teach, whether they worked for me or not. So I was always teaching people
and you know what? The people I taught ended up doing well, because I loved it, and whatever
you do with passion and love, people will do well and they're going to find it. So those
are the keys to finding a good internship. It should change you. It should improve you,
and it should be a professional development chance, not just a chance where you can click
boxes on a management console. You can do that in your house. I want you to get experience.
I want you to become a cloud architect. So how do you find these? So to find a good internship,
it's like finding a job. Apply, apply, and apply some more. And I want to put that into
numbers for you.
When I found my first networking job 25 years ago, or 27 years ago, I applied to at least
200 locations. Now here's what's great about applying to 200 different internships. You
will get a call back and you will find one because you're motivated and you searched
everywhere. But the people that don't call you back now, they'll be calling you for years,
either for an internship or for a job and that's what happened. And for the people that
I work with, I have them apply everywhere. And those applications in the future often
come into phone calls from recruiters or recruiters from organizations. And it's a great way to
start building your career, get your name out there and put it everywhere. But if you
don't get called back for an internship, the economy is really challenging, there's COVID-19
going on, don't fear, you're going to create your own internship.
And I bet you, the internship you create is going to be a better one anyway. And here's
how I suggest you create your own internship. I want you to take a post in a LinkedIn group,
a Facebook group, someplace where there's a lot of people. And I want you to say, "I've
recently completed the AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate, or I've recently completed
the AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional Exam, or the AWS Advanced Networking Specialty
Exam." Tell them the certifications you've done. Post that you have built a home lab
and you've worked on all these technologies and you're looking for an internship where
you can really help an organization grow. You want to do everything you can to help
them and learn along the way. You will get responses and not only are you going to get
responses, you're going to get a lot of them and it's going to be fast. It's going to overwhelm
your inbox with connection requests.
And from there, then you'll have the opportunity to find the right internship for you. For
those that you don't take, thank them for the opportunity, let them know you're grateful
and keep the door open and find a way to build a connection for the future. Because you're
going to get a lot of responses, but pick the one that's going to be most advantageous
to you or the one that looks like the place that you might want to work at when you're
done, because you probably will get a job offer, especially if it's a smaller organization
and you can show an impact. So now when you get this an internship, and if you follow
my advice, you will find an internship, now the key is how do I use that internship to
get my first job? So every day when you come in, happy, energetic, motivated, let them
know that you're excited to be there. Say thank you too, periodically.
Every day let them know that you want to do more, that you've got more capabilities behind
you, that you want to go above and beyond. Now while you're there, and this'll be easier
in the future at some point when COVID is gone, network with as many people as possible,
ideally in a place where you can see them, but in today's world network with them over
the internet, set up a Zoom call, set up a FaceTime call, set up a Skype call. It doesn't
matter. Network, network, network with people in the organization. And while you're there,
share ideas. I promise you there's something that you have expertise on that someone in
that organization doesn't know. Maybe you teach yoga, maybe you're a martial artist.
It doesn't matter. Share your knowledge. When you share your knowledge with others, not
only is it a wonderful thing to do, but it builds long lasting friendships and relationships.
Now, when you're in this internship, make yourself indispensable, make them be the person
that they call first because they know you're always going to deliver and they can trust
you. And while you're there, get some extra credibility to boost your career. Offer to
write the organization's white papers. Most organizations, including our organizations,
love to do content marketing. We show people what we do through our content marketing.
Every organization wants that. So build some content marketing, but do it good. Build something
about a technology that the internship or the company specializes in. Build [inaudible
00:08:26] case study showing how that company can help others through the better leveraging
of technology. Do it and build it well, make it the best paper you've ever done and coauthor
it with one of the experts of that organization, because you'll get what's called authority
hacking.
You're going to get their name recognition next to yours, you're helping that customer
and the world is going to see you as an expert because you made it perfect. And promote that
paper because as more people see your papers and your white papers, more people are going
to say, "Wow, this is not just someone that just passed a certification, this is someone
that knows." And there is an extraordinary shortage of qualified people out there. I've
interviewed thousands of people in my career and I can tell you, you can interview 3,000
people and if you're lucky, you can hire one. So show you're different, show you're better,
publish your knowledge, share your knowledge and let the world know that you can't wait
to work, you're excited to work and someone will find you. And at the end of this internship,
one of two things will happen or three things.
Good chance they'll hire you because you've delivered excellence and it's hard to find
someone like you, but maybe the organization doesn't have the financial resources to hire
you. Chances are, if you've expressed how much appreciation you've had and you've really
done a good job that hiring manager might call a friend to place you. I've had interns
and I didn't have the ability to hire them in the past then I called friends and found
them jobs. I was grateful for the work they had done for me, they were grateful for the
lessons and I did anything I could to help them. So that's something that can work for
you and you know what? If for some reason they don't hire you and it doesn't lead to
an immediate job, you've got experience, you've got some references now, and you'll still
be in a better position. So apply, apply, and apply for jobs and very soon, you're going
to have the cloud architect job of your dreams.
These are our recommendations when it comes to gaining experience, we had the video on
how to build your home lab, and we strongly recommend you follow that and this will teach
you what to do on an internship. We have a lot of new videos coming up, teaching you
how to interview and how to be your best, so you can get your first cloud architect
job and have a wonderful cloud computing career. If you're working on AWS certification, we
have a free AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate ebook. The link is in the description
below. It's everything you need to become an AWS Certified Solution Architect, and it's
completely free.
Every Monday, we do free AWS mentoring, where you bring us your questions and we answer
them in real time on a Zoom call to help you get certified, whether you're our students
or someone else's, we still want to help you. We have launched our new online virtual classrooms
where we have a virtual classroom experience for the AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate
Exam and very soon we'll have one for the AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional
Exam, and the AWS Advanced Security Exam. Those courses are filmed, they're just in
the process of being video edited so we can deliver you something that's going to be a
fantastic experience. Please check out our online Academy, the link is in the description
below. Thank you so much for watching this video. We look forward to seeing you in a
new video next Wednesday. Take care.