Track Everything

[00:00:00]
>> Paul DeBettignies: Track everything you do. Here's why I'm saying this. Let's say today you reach out to sports engine for that intern role. Also, it's a year ago, you reached out to sports engine. It's now today and you can't remember who you spoke to. And for some reason you still don't have the email in your outbox.

[00:00:19]
Keep track of what resumé you sent to who on what day for what role and where you found it at. Because one day Jesse Howard won't be working at sports engine and she's got me working at SPSS commerce or any other technology company in town. And maybe you had a phone conversation with Jesse and what really really well but they didn't accept they didn't take you for the role and that's fine.

[00:00:39]
But now your email to Jesse as hey Jesse, you may not remember me but you and I spoke January of 2017 about the intern role your head of sports engine then you told me to stay in touch with me. You will guess what I am. Because I see now on your website at your new company, you're looking for this.

[00:00:55]
She's going to get back to you. What happens though is that we're always looking for jobs today, today, today, today, and we for get about. And so will we in two years, in four years, in seven years down the road. Depending on where you live and where you're listening to this presentation I'm giving, in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, we always have what Minneapolis–Saint Paul being a really large small town.

[00:01:18]
It's not six degrees of separation for I always jokingly call it 2.2. If you're a developer in town and you're connected to Mark Obranski here at Frontend Masters, you have access to like a third of the community from the get go. One person knows that many. Or knows, right?

[00:01:36]
Could be very wide, not so deep sometimes. Because here's the thing, that person who's saying no to you today, that CTO who is saying no to you today will be at a new group in six years. Don't lose track of these folks. Remember, write it all down. Plus, the other reason is this.

[00:01:52]
The last thing you want to do have Jesse from sports engine call you up a little out of the blue and ask you to talk about that role and you don't remember sending your resumé to them because those conversations suck really bad. You're who, about what? Actually happened to me three weeks ago and I'm like the conversation didn't last four minutes.

[00:02:11]
I was like how do you not keep track of this? I judged that person. They probably could have been really awesome, but I'm like, if you can't remember this one thing, what else don't you remember? I don't like to be that judgmental but on things like this I am to keep track of folks.