Networking & Dream Hire List

[00:00:00]
>> Often tools that I've found useful, there's probably many that I'm not even thinking about, but LinkedIn is always the go-to. It's like, yeah, you can see people's resumes essentially by looking them up. There's a lot of search terms that you can leverage. I've found a lot of value in Twitter over the years.

[00:00:16]
I've been able to connect with people and have conversations. There's definitely people I have truly hired that we just met through Twitter. Maybe I've met them at conferences but it's that conversation had started, conferences, meetups, events, I love those. You're able to talk with people and just get to know people and talk about what they're working on.

[00:00:37]
It goes a really long way. You can set up coffees, lunches. Obviously, not super scalable, right? But it definitely is working. Slack communities, you can engage on and meet people. You can look at open source of things that people are working on. You're like, wow, that person's really engaged on this project, they're doing a lot of great work.

[00:00:59]
It's a great way to network and talk to that person. I also think about to that scalable point, how do you maybe scale or sell your company or your team? Find ways to maybe create tech blog posts and put that work out there. This is not only good for people external seeing all the cool work that you're doing.

[00:01:22]
But as a team, sometimes it's really cool to be able to talk about those things. And granted, you can't talk about everything. We all have different things that secret sauce and things like that, but it's really super helpful. I share updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Just keeping a small volume of this over time is really helpful.

[00:01:41]
I like to speak or attend conferences, granted I don't speak as much, but I think it's really helpful. Or encouraging people on my team to speak. Yeah, you should really talk about that. You wanna do that? That's a really cool idea. Podcasts, those are really lightweight. I'm not saying you need to go create a podcast, but you can be a guest on a podcast and talk about some of the cool work that your team's doing.

[00:02:07]
One thing I really like to do, and this is an exercise that I've done and made other managers on my team do as well, is creating a dream hire list. And what I like to say about the dream hire list is it's basically creating a list of people that you would jump at the chance to hire.

[00:02:25]
What you wanna do is it's probably, this is not a huge list, you might have your sourcing tool that there's thousands of candidates. I look at this as my dream hire list is maybe five to ten people, then I'm like, wow, if you were looking for a role, I would wanna hire you.

[00:02:44]
And so I'm keeping them top of mind and in my networking, in my little bit of spare time, I might be checking in with them, or let's grab coffee and go back and forth. There has definitely been people that I've connected with for years. I end up hiring them because it was the right time, Mark.

[00:03:05]
>> Will just said keep in mind for volunteer opportunities, I don't know if you want to share.
>> Yeah, there's a local bootcamp called Prime Academy. I've actually hired two of their graduates and they're both really stellar performers. And I've also met lots of great other mentors who would be kind of in that list of like, if you were available to join our team, that sounds excellent.

[00:03:36]
I've really enjoyed the conversations we've had, the perspectives you've given to these bootcamp graduates, things like that.
>> I love that, too. And also, if you're volunteering, you're giving back to the community, and that's even why I like on even a blog post. It's like you're helping educate others or giving insights into the approaches that you've taken.

[00:03:56]
I love all that. Tech is a small community, I think we should help each other. Jem said it very well in 101. He talked about that of us helping one another and giving back. I think that's super important, but it also can help you, right? You make those connections.

[00:04:12]
So who should be on a dream hire list? I mean, yeah, it's people you wanna jump at and hire, but maybe it's someone you've worked with previously. I've worked with a lot of great people that I'm like, yeah, I would love to work with them again. Maybe it's someone that's referred by others.

[00:04:27]
I love referrals, ask your team for referrals. But someone speaks really highly of them and you're like, wow, maybe I should talk with them. Maybe it's someone that you've read a tech blog post or it's like you've seen their open source work, they're doing something publicly. Maybe they spoke at a conference and you're like, wow, he seemed very knowledgeable about that topic, I need to talk more with this person.

[00:04:52]
Maybe it's someone who's left your company that you're like, man, I would totally rehire that person, and kind of regret that they left. All right, so we're gonna do an exercise. You all are gonna create your dream hire list. Essentially, what you'll do is I have a Google Doc that will kinda help give some instructions.

[00:05:13]
But really, it's going through your network, look on LinkedIn, think of colleagues that you've worked with. People that you know or someone that's publicly available that you're like, I would love to work with that person and start to form a dream hire list. And then you can leverage this and look back to it and kinda just maintain this list over time and look for opportunities to connect with these people over time.