Introduction

[00:00:02]
>> Paul DeBettignies: All right, so I know you all have had a long couple of weeks, busy couple of weeks, learned a lot. What I wanna do now is talk a little bit about what to do next. So I'm gonna talk about whether it's gonna be doing a job search.

[00:00:16]
I know that for those who are the entrepreneur types, you're gonna be looking for technical co-founders. All of this stuff is gonna kind of tie in together. Okay, so a quick little bit about me. I don't like to do these slides, but I'm always told you're supposed to, right.

[00:00:28]
I've been recruiting here in Minneapolis St. Paul for 20 years in the technology product, UX design space. Mostly the last six plus years now focusing on startups, small tech companies in town who don't have a recruiter, an HR person in place. And so I come in and try to help them get up to speed and then usually hand that role off to a full time person.

[00:00:47]
And then I do a lot of public speaking in the Midwest and around the country on recruiters, recruiting HR stuff, social media, how to recruit like a startup. Okay, so what I want to do then is talk to you all about, here's what I would do if I were you tomorrow or Monday.

[00:01:04]
And so some of you are gonna be at different places, okay? Some of you are gonna have already completely filled out LinkedIn profile. It's gonna look amazing. And some of you are gonna be like, LinkedIn, why do I have to be on there? So just understand when I do some of these examples, you're gonna be at different places, and that's okay too.

[00:01:18]
All right, one thing I wanna do from the get-go is say that you are not an entry level developer. Please do not ever say that anywhere, anytime, ever. I know that sounds weird to say, right, but when you say that you're an entry level developer to an employer, they automatically assume you suck.

[00:01:36]
Okay, you don't. You're going to be learning, you're going to be expanding your horizons, you're going to learning new tools and stuff. But if you say an entry level developer they're gonna offer you $12 an hour. That is not your goal, that is not why you're here. That's not why you're gonna be trying to get into this industry, okay?

[00:01:50]
So if I'm you, I'm gonna be talking about I'm an associate developer., I'm a junior developer. That's actually the phrase I always use. And you'll use that for the first year or two, could be three years depending on what your curve is going to be, okay? You can say you're a software engineer.

[00:02:05]
That's fantastic too. But please don't say you're entry level. Everyone raise your right hand. No, really raise your hand. Say after me. I will not.
>> I will not.
>> Paul DeBettignies: Call myself.
>> Call myself.
>> Paul DeBettignies: An entry level developer.
>> Any entry level developer.
>> Paul DeBettignies: Thank you very much, you guys are amazing.

[00:02:21]
See how much fun this is?
>> [LAUGH]