Developers Should Grow Some Balls

Applying jobs the right way

Photo by Henrique Junior on Unsplash

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This blog is part of my career guidance series

• Guide To Get In Data Science — Part-1

• Guide To Get In Data Science — Part-2

• Zero To One For NLP

• 5 Rules For Getting A Job

• Technical Writing As A Competitive Advantage

• Developers Should Grow Some Balls

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I am tired of the LinkedIn posts/messages written by some weak developers. Earlier I have mentioned about the Ahaa factor when applying for a job. I want to write more about it now.

So who is a weak developer?

A typical job reach out message on LinkedIn is like

“I am x title with y years of experience with skills in a,b and c. PFA my resume.”

This is the worst way to pitch for a job. The industry doesn’t give a shit about the fact that you are looking for a job without showing any signals of skills.

What are the signals of skills?

If you are a software engineer -> Tell us about your Leetcode or Hackerank profile

If you are data scientist -> Tell us about your Kaggle or hackathons

If you are into open source -> Tell us about your contributions

If you love making live demos -> Send us a link and a blog explaining it

If you are an educator -> Send us a link to the blog/youtube

If you want to work for startups -> Tell us explicitly

If you want to be a researcher -> Tell us about your publication

Most people don’t choose their identity and end up with a generic profile. To stand out you need to be great at one of these and develop the T shaped skills.

There are also some developers who try to hack these signals i.e they will do a little bit of everything.. have a shallow kaggle profile..write a few silly blogs..do some silly OSS contribution..give a silly talk. These developers should really grow some balls.

And of course, get your resume right. I have gone through many iterations of my resume and ended up with this -> resume.pratik.ai. Your resume should be a very clean 1-page document tailored for your dream profile.

Never ever just send the resume. Write some highlights of your profile. People also call it a cover letter.

The template

Before you reach out to someone, know what they want.

When you reach out to someone, give them the Ahaa moment.

“Define who you want to be. Create those signals.”

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