Leveraging a Self-Taught Background

[00:00:00]
>> Paul DeBettignies: And so part of her by the way, for those who are self taught in your education section and by the way, would I add front end masters to week beginner boot camp in my education section of my LinkedIn profile? Yes. Absolutely. If you're taking online courses absolutely and yes.

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>> Speaker 2: What are companies looking for in self learners as we don't have a CS degree?
>> Paul DeBettignies: Yeah.
>> Speaker 2: What would companies consider, what would they be looking for when considering?
>> Paul DeBettignies: Usually it's going to be things like and so what we'll take a pause and LinkedIn part because I'm guessing this is going to be a majority of the people who are trying to be able to figure out how do we tell an employer why they should hire me, but I didn't go to Stanford University Minnesota or University Wisconsin or didn't go to a cool school in London.

[00:00:44]
Right. The idea is this, is that self learning is actually many people industry will consider self learning to be harder. You are actually the one who's going on figuring out the curriculum. You're the one learning this stuff on your own. You're the one. You just have to be able to say I wanna learn technology because I wanna go do these things.

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And I wouldn't just say you want to make the world a better place. Like what's the one part of your world that you want to make a better place? Okay, so employers are looking for those who have learned something. They put it on GitHub. There are now three, they can show, kind of like going back to your website.

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It used to be this, now it's this, and this is what I'm going to work on for my next feature. I wanna know that you're taking the stuff that you're learning online and what you've actually done with it. Like it can be a really rudimentary app in the beginning, that's okay.

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But then you added four more features, and I can look at GitHub and I can see what you did and it's on your portfolio on your website. And now you're telling me a story. And that's one of the themes that will happen and we get a little bit further into this.

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Again, I'm an introvert but I have gotten fairly well to learn how to tell my story this is who I'm, this is what I do, this is why I'm doing it. As a quick side note, I started recruiting 21 years ago so last year when it was 20 years my non recruiter friends were like Paul that's amazing way to go, yay rah rah.

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My recruiter friends like why the hell are you still doing this after 20 years people are crazy. Like, yes you are. But the idea is this is that when I tell people that I actually really like to hear people's stories, I want to figure out how to help companies grow teams.

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And I want to figure out for job seekers what it is that they're looking for, and put them in the right role for them. People go, now I understand why you're doing this.
>> Speaker 2: I would just add that it seems like the current atmosphere is less about what college did you come from.

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>> Paul DeBettignies: Yes.
>> Speaker 2: In the past it would be like a hard requirement. But it seems like if people see that you've actually built something that takes away the education question.
>> Paul DeBettignies: So this is the part about proving it. And this why your website, getting your domain name, showing these updates on LinkedIn matter.

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Show people what you've done. I created this thing, we went from here, to here, to here, to here, okay? I now know you wanna learn. You're motivated. You can pick up new technologies quickly. Has now wiped out 80% of the objection if you don't have a college degree.

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Okay. So for a long time on the west coast in the valley right it was if you didn't have a degree from like 17 institutions you were hosed, you were not going to be. They've actually now proven that in many cases it doesn't matter. You may have a better network you may have learned from a couple of professors that taught internet of things better than you get.

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There are some advantages, but not the way it used to be perceived. Here's the other thing about self learning. Whether you're self learner and your learning here from [INAUDIBLE] masters and you're learning from other courses online. You can't stop learning. There's one thing I can say to you right now.

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Don't stop. Don't stop learning the next thing here is why? How long ago did iOS code get written Mark, do you know off the top of your head? Call it.
>> Mark: 2010.
>> Paul DeBettignies: So eight years. So this is how I used to do it. I used to have a blackberry now I have one of these.

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I need a new one of these by the way, this one's about three years old now. The idea is this is it, there's gonna always be a next thing. Right? There's gonna be a new thing that's going to change our world. You never stop learning. Okay, so just commit I would say to you raise your right hand now and do it all over again, but I won't make you like take an oath again.