Getting a Front-End Developer Job Macro to Micro Content

[00:00:01]
>> This is where you make your bread and butter, right? Macro to micro content. What this means is taking large pieces of things that you're building. And turning it to smaller things that you're building to continue what I like to call the HR funnel of getting the attention of hiring managers, right?

[00:00:20] So you see, you have your website. Here's the hiring funnel, the website, portfolio that has email capture, and contact form, and then which hopefully leads to a phone call. But what happens first is you have your social. You're pushing everything out using scheduling tool like Buffer. You're pushing projects and links, and you're doing Twitch, doing YouTube.

[00:00:42] You're blogging, you're tweeting things out, which leads to people looking at the website, which leads to the phone call. It's a continuous cycle over and over and over again. This is how everyone does it. And once you get to mid and senior, they know that, hey, the more things I build and the more things I produce, the more things I can showcase, which ups my versatility.

[00:01:09] Which actually showcases, sends people to my website, which has other people who hire, people who are in hiring decisions, contact me. So we are constantly moving in this flowing state of producing, pushing, and then dealing with the social aspect of people, right? So there's a few things that you can do here, like for instance, we had the GitHub issue.

[00:01:36] People were like, well, my GitHub's not fleshed out. These are other ways that you can do to get people's attention and stuff, right? So one way is Codepen, right? So I actually have this one up already. Right here, this is a person's website I was trying to show you guys about this Codepen.

[00:02:00] She has two dogs. She absolutely loves them and she did everything she could to put them as a part of her projects. She put her Codepen up, and she had bubbles. Lucy and her ukulele, all of these designs. She did a grid imagery, CSS train 404 page. The force is strong with this one, so she did this.

[00:02:21] I think she did this for May the 4th, right? Puppy-loader, so she has a loading screen for her with a puppy on it. She did all this stuff just to showcase everything that she wanted to do. How a firewall should work, just a ton of stuff. She was one of our troops I think two, three years ago.

[00:02:44] And this is how she really made her name and helped her get jobs. She used her Codepen to actually attract, which attracted employers cuz they were interested in her work. So that's what I recommend. Those of you who are more design-focused as well, this is a great place.

[00:03:04] Chris Coyier and his crew, they have a newsletter that shoots out design challenges every week. So you don't even have to think about the stuff. You can just go look at what they're doing and focus on that week on building what that is. And then picking that, then send it out via Twitter, things like that.

[00:03:25] Let me see if I can find someone who has a really great story about that. Cuz I wanna tell you guys the story of Jacob Oakley, if I can find his, Where he's at, I can't find where he's at. That's all right, I'm still gonna tell you guys the story of Jacob Oakley.

[00:03:47] Jacob was an HR. He worked in HR in the army and he came to Vets Who Code about four years ago. And he was hands down the worst front-end developer that I ever met when I first met him. And he had no idea to how he consistently practice.

[00:04:04] So we put him on, this is my first pip that I've ever done at Vets Who Code. We put him on his performance plan that will have him pushing things out a lot through Codepen. And as he got better about pushing more things out, he was able to consistently start getting the attention of Chris Coyier and their team for his Codepens.

[00:04:28] Till we put him on our Codepen team, which he now leads, and he helps other troops learn how to write code on our Codepen team, and they still consistently get picked pen on Chris Coyier. Chris Coyier was so impressed with us work. He came and did ask me anything with us, and Jacob was able to host Chris Coyier for about an hour.

[00:04:53] So that's how these processes work. Now Jacob, he ended up getting so talented in his craft that his first job as a developer was a mid-level position. So he skipped entry and went to mid. He was actually the second person at Vets Who Code to ever skip entry level programmer and go straight to mid or senior.

[00:05:17] So Codepen is a very powerful tool if you use it right, if you do the work, if you're consistent. Consistency is key when it comes to content. You can't do it once and then be like, all right, I'm done with it. You have to continuously and consistently produce things and then push it out regularly.

[00:05:41] Here we go, Twitch, if you get more personal, if you like having fun with people, this is a great avenue of a way to reach out to people and get what you're doing out there. This is a page by CodeHustle. He started a few weeks ago, and people love him.

[00:06:01] He already has 3.1 thousand followers. That's a lot of people to look at you talking about code. Sorry, but yeah, that's crazy. So that's another way. If you're personal and you like being there and if you're okay with, most important, you're okay with failure in public, Twitch is perfect for you.

[00:06:24] Seeing how you talk yourself through problems, seeing how you fix things, seeing how you're interacting with people. While you're talking, you pause in the chat, things like that, employers pay attention to that type of stuff. So you wanna make sure that hey, yo, when I had this stuff up, I'm doing this.

[00:06:39] Let me make sure I put my best foot forward because you never know who's gonna see it, because, guess what, they're hiring. I've had two veterans who have gone through, have done Twitch, and they've gotten jobs based off their Twitch channels. And CodeHustle, he's a part of our team, and he gets a lot of good feedback and job opportunities just because of this.

[00:07:06] YouTube, now you're looking for a little something, a little more old school, okay, and we all say it that. But YouTube's where it's at. They have YouTube live. It's been around forever. It's a stable brand. It's more mature. You can have a vlog video cast. Some of you people that are on the call or on the workshop right now have actually learned through YouTube, right?

[00:07:30] So you can do, you can teach through YouTube, upload it and have your channel where you're doing that, right? So you should definitely think about that. Think about your flow. Try to make it once a week. Plan it out, talk about it. Who's some good YouTube channel teachers out there?

[00:07:50] Anyone knows?
>> Traversy Media is the biggest thing.
>> Yeah, Traversy Media. Yeah, they do a lot of that stuff. I know, I think there's a guy named James from Memphis. I think he does a lot of stuff on there. He's a dev advocate there, James Quick. So that's a really good area.

[00:08:09] Just only recent, just learned on the way how I know him. Traversy Media is a great one. I think This Dot Co or Tracy Lee, they do a lot of things on YouTube as well. So definitely use this as an avenue to help grow your brand and gain your exposure, so people who are hiring, they have eyes on you.

[00:08:28] It's all about right now, as a person trying to get a job, as a person trying to get that interview, it's all about getting eyes on you. So there's a saying in tech that getting a job is a job itself. So you have to plan that stuff out.

[00:08:44] So that way, you can go out there and consistently produce, so you can get the type of eyes and looks that you're trying to get for your resume and your portfolio, so you get the interview. When it comes to blogging, there's no place better, in my opinion, than dev.to.

[00:09:03] One, you're not competing with everyone, right? Only other place better than blogging than on dev.to is probably your own blog, but you might not get as many eyes on it as you would as dev.to. So even cross-posting or for extra credit, put it on dev.to, utilize our API and then have it pushed to your website using serverless technologies.

[00:09:27] You can do that. I've seen it before, it's pretty awesome. So when you're doing that with this blogging and posting, make sure you're using all of their hashtags and you're sharing that stuff out. You wanna make sure that it's something that people can resonate with and that you consistently share.

[00:09:52] I can't recommend this enough as writing has really helped my career over the past six years really blossom. And finally, Cuz I know a lot of people have stuff about social media, Twitter. Name of the game is Twitter. You can't go wrong with Twitter. Twitter is where everybody you wanna know in tech is there.

[00:10:23] Every job you don't have in tech is there. You can't build your network. You can't build your community. You can't be taken, I mean, you could, but it would be very hard. You can't really do, especially in this remote time where in-person meetings is difficult. It's really hard to get the type of relationships and tractions you need without Twitter.

[00:10:50] Greg Curl is a great example of somebody who has been doing it, right? He's been using that 100DaysOfCode hashtag and talking about his journey at coding. He's been getting the type of looks and information that he wants, that he needs to make sure that people are focusing on him.

[00:11:10] He's already starting to get calls. So this is what you will want to, look at the compliment, didn't even notice that. So this is what you would want to do as you wanna grow, as you wanna use social media, particularly Twitter, to your advantage. I have seen people use Instagram as well.

[00:11:32] I suck as an Instagrammer. I'm the worst person on Instagram, and I have a voice made for radio, or face made for radio, whatever that old person saying is. Either way, Instagram is not exactly my bag. But when it comes to stuff, that's where people look at. Addy Osmani, I think he's on there is Addyo for Instagram.

[00:12:00] He does great with his Instagram, if you guys are looking for someone to follow on there. But he's also on Twitter as well. But he's an engineering manager at Google, so people follow him regardless.