Once you’ve finished your bootcamp, you’ll want to land a job. Mark, 32, completed a Full Stack Web Developer Bootcamp and found work with a small tech startup. He says: ‘I was advised to start networking before my bootcamp finished. This was excellent advice, because I already had three offers lined up before I’d finished my final project. I chose the company that seemed to best suit my personality: laidback and informal, and so far, I really feel I’ve made the right decision for me.’ Although tech jobs are in high demand, you want to make sure your post-bootcamp options are as good as possible. Read on to find out the best networking tips for coders.
1. Five A Day
With networking, it’s obviously important that you meet new people and extend your circle of contacts. With this in mind, set yourself a goal regarding the number of people you want to contact on a daily basis who could help you move into the coding industry. In an article on The Hard Refresh, introverted Carrie Watkins states that her ‘introverted tendencies raised their quiet and unassuming heads within weeks of starting’ her project, which was to contact a number of key players in her industry. Her goal was to contact five prominent people in tech a day.
How did she get past her introverted personality? By doing the following:
- Ensuring the reach-out was about that person. She had to help the people she was contacting in some way – by, for example, giving their words a boost on social media, thanking them for their excellent work or offering them a person or an idea that would be useful for their line of work.
- Putting reminders on her calendar for the afternoon so that she couldn’t forget about her networking goal of contacting five people a day, otherwise it was too easy for her to ‘forget’ about something she found hard.
- Keeping emails short, as well as entertaining and helpful.
- Using Twitter and LinkedIn to get a little background on the person being contacted.
- Mixing it up – using a variety of ways to contact people include email, Twitter, LinkedIn or asking to meet in person.
2. Ask the Professionals
One of the key networking tips for coders is to speak to the people who specifically service the tech industry’s employment vacancies- the recruitment consultants. A good consultant should be able to provide insider knowledge about various companies, and what it’s like to work there. They should also be able to help you with the interview process and it might be easier for you to negotiate via a third party should you receive a job offer via a recruitment consultancy.
3. Social Media as a Search Engine
Think about social media in relation to searching for work – consider all the additional people to whom you’re exposed: acquaintances, old friends, friends of friends. Connections and personal relationships will always help you when looking for work. Here are networking tips for coders on how to leverage your social media connections:
- Spruce up your profile. Google yourself to see how you will appear to potential employers. Remove what doesn’t look professional.
- Add profile content and contribute to social media conversations that are relevant to coding.
- Look for 5-10 companies you would like to work for. Start following them on Twitter and Instagram. You’ll pick up a lot about their company culture and the kind of employees they want. Start tailoring your social media presence to make yourself attractive to them.
- Use Hashtagify, a free web service. You can now search Twitter subjects by their hashtags. Look up #techjobs.
- Connect potential employers on a platform like LinkedIn – it’s considered less overbearing than emailing. LinkedIn accounts are also easier to find than email addresses.
4. Face-to-Face
It can be tempting to just engage in digital networking, but face-to-face networking offers a number of advantages including the ability to read the body language of the person and react appropriately to that. This allows one to develop very strong personal connections.
Look for tech conferences, networking events and tech meetups in your area. It’s worth looking for tech events on Facebook as well. Check out this 2018 tech conference directory on the web – see if there’s anything in your part of the world. Or try The TechMap, which includes meetups, seminars, user groups, hackathons and tech events in your area.
5. Tech Online Sites
You’re looking for work in tech. This means you should frequent sites where other developers hang out. They are likely to be the first to hear about potential openings in their companies.
Two techie sites worth getting to know are Stack Overflow and GitHub. You can use Stack Overflow for research and to get solutions to your programming problems, but at the same time you can meet some of your fellow developers. Simultaneously, get set up on GitHub, where you can host and review code, manage projects, and build software alongside millions of other developers. Add your existing code to share with prospective employers or start new projects to keep yourself relevant. GitHub accounts are free, and it’s the best place to swap ideas and code with other programmers online. Both Stack Overflow and GitHub are great for building your reputation as a serious coder.
In closing, we’ve listed five networking tips for coders. If you can, try and incorporate them all. You never know which networking route will land you the best job offer. If you need to polish your coding skills before starting to network, consider signing up for one of HyperionDev’s six month, online coding bootcamps in Full Stack Web Development, Mobile Development and Software Engineering. They all include a free trial and come with mentor support.
