from car salesman to software dev

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to guidance counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had guidance counselors in middle school. We had guidance counselors in high school, but we didn't really have guidance counselors in college and now as professionals. We don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode and if you need to reach me, Taylor at vacovac.com is how to get and touch me old fashioned email social media at tdsintdesse. And then finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Enough of me running my mouth. So David gave a quick background about himself, but I want to go and dive in. So David, again, I did kind of a call for speakers a while back. I wanted to get more people on the show that are going through the job search.

I was very, very heavy kind of leadership culture, which is great, but I want to get back to the root of this show and that's to bring on job seekers and help other job seekers. So David, let's dive in, man. So talk about really kind of growing up what got you in the software development and then car salesman and then that first transition. Yeah, absolutely. So I know this will kind of age me, but I first started getting into like web development and whatnot when we got those, you know, CD roms from Earthlink. And they're like, hey, you can get free web hosting when you use our dial up.

I had no idea what it was, but started building my own websites. Of course, like most people, I think my first website was like a, uh, poked X of sorts, but back like when it was still red and blue, right? So this is years ago. I have no idea about my smile and see what I do. Book them on man. Like the original game. Oh, Pokemon. Yeah. Yeah. The original 150. The original one was actually none of the crap those kids have these days. Yeah. So, you know, at that point, I'm like, okay, this is cool. So my parents bought me an HTML for dummy's book from Barnes and Noble are made in borders.

You know, taught myself first and now loved it. And I don't know. I don't know. I enjoyed it, but no one ever told me like, hey, you could actually get a job from this, right? So I just kind of let it, you know, on the, on the burner, so to speak. And then it was 2019, 2020 or so when I was like, you know what, car sales, even before the pandemic is just not great. I mean, you really got to binge your, it is. It is. And there's that really weird ethical about it. I know. So I was like, you know what? This is just, it's going downhill.

I had a, I'm interrupting car salesmen. Yeah. Maybe worse than recruiters. Oh, it absolutely is. Maybe. I would say it is. Go ahead. So once we're short, my daughter was born actually the day that the pandemic was declared. We spent some time in the NICU because of that. So that really put things in a perspective for me. So eventually, about a year later, once I kind of got stuff together, I started a bootcamp. Springboard actually. And a few months into that, I realized I'm like, you know, the dealership I was working at, it was, it wasn't a dumpster fire. It was a flaming dumpster, right?

And I realized like, I need to get out of this. So I put a Hail Mary on LinkedIn, got a few connection requests, whatnot. But I saw someone who was hiring for junior engineers and he said, all experience open. So I was like, I don't have any experience. I'm going to give this a shot. And I was about 20% of the way through my bootcamp and I'm just messaging them directly. I didn't comment on the post, right? That's like throwing chum in the water. I message them directly. And I'm like, hey, I would love to talk to you about this. I just made myself as assertive as possible.

Five minutes later, we talked. And then about a week later, that's when I got the take on assessment and about two weeks after that got my first job. That's awesome. That's awesome. So a lot to break down here. Yeah. Using LinkedIn. So so we're kind of jumping ahead, but I kind of want to kind of go everything we just talked about. If you hear my daughter in the background, she's having breakfast and she's really enjoying her breakfast this morning. But basically LinkedIn, right? So why why did you choose like like I really want to kind of dig in onto the conventional game? But why did you choose to DM instead of comments?

Yeah. So like I said, I I'm not saying comments are bad. When you're your first time searching for a job, when you comment, you're providing that as a context for everybody else to see there's a potential job. At the end of the day, you're responsible for yourself. And like I said, you're literally chumming the waters at that point. You're creating more competition for yourself. But it's not only that is for me personally, if I was on the other end, I would want a more personalized message. Right. I want to, you know, I'd want to see someone that is actually taking the initiative to reach out, something that's, you know, very well researched to the point.

Cause you know, you see posts from hiring managers all the time, they get a thousand applicants and only three people message. It doesn't matter how much you preach on that. It doesn't seem like anyone actually does that. So you're always going to make a better impression when you're reaching out to that person directly and not only that, but giving them a reason to talk to you. Right. You have to take that extra step. Yep. I love that. And so, and so how did that conversation go? Like, like, did the guy get back to you? What did the interview look like? Yeah. I mean, do you feel like you separated yourself because of the DM and how you framed everything?

Mm hmm. I would like to believe that. I don't, you know, delete my LinkedIn. So I don't have the messages anymore. But you know, yeah, he, we ended up talking about five minutes later. I was in the line at Chick-fil-A. And we're talking a bit. And a big point was I sold the fact that I had car experience. Right. And I had a company that worked with dealerships to the company's car, car me go. So what happens is if you want to sell your car, you work through the app and then you sell it to a dealership instead of having to go to the dealership, which is very convenient.

You get more money that way too. But I, I leveraged my experience of knowing not only, you know, having that car experience but like, hey, I am a self starter. I'm, you know, I'm doing this bootcamp. I've transitioned from different, you know, career fields. And he told me months later, he's like, it was your, it was your, your work ethic and your can do attitude that really impressed him. But, you know, he was at first, he was concerned. He's like, you know what? Like, I like you. But I don't know if I can take a risk on you yet because of how little experience you have.

So that's where I got that take home assessment where he's like, this is the framework we use. You have, I think it was about a week because it was the holiday. So it gave me a few extra days. But he's like, you're going to need to build a credit. here's the experience, you know, the requirements. Right. You never built a credit. No, no, I haven't got to that point in my bootcamp yet. So, you know, I had a few friends who were willing to offer some feedback just like, hey, what do you think about this? Sure. But really, I built it on my own and I presented it to him.

He liked it. I had an interview with the CEO, which Andrew, for some reason, you're watching this. You are great, but super intimidating. That interview. I didn't think I was going to get the job to be honest. But yeah, they're like, you know what, we like you. Let's give you a shot. And again, talking to him on Slator is like, it was just because of your attitude, how you conveyed yourself. It wasn't your technical skills at all. Yeah, again, so I've talked to a lot of senior leadership on the show and the one thing that keeps keeps coming up time and time again is that they view every junior dev the same technically.

It's how you present yourself. It's how you communicate. It's how you get after things, which is incredibly important. So I want to go back, not go back, but go back on my piece of paper. You talk about demonstrating your worth. One of the things you said is that you see a lot of junior devs almost kind of what I call moping around, shoulders hunched over. Oh, what was me self deprecating? Can you talk about that and really how that mindset needs to change, especially for juniors? Yeah. I remember one of the my most viral posts was just talking about the point that it's like, you're not entitled a job.

That's just as much as as Calis does that sounds like no one owes you a job, no one owes you an interview or anything. Now it'd be nice to have a rejection letter, all that stuff. But like, Athena, they don't owe you that. And once you kind of take that perspective and like, you know what, no one is going to look out for myself more than me, then you have that perspective of like, okay, everything I post on social media is a reflection of who I am to a certain extent. So if I'm looking at someone like, let's say I was a hiring manager, I know you're not supposed to technically use LinkedIn to make that decision, but you're going to look, right?

I mean, social media, we're posting, you know, we want people to see us, right? So if I saw someone that if all they posted was how they were upset because they didn't get an interview or they're talking negatively about previous employers or they're just like, I just can't seem to get a job. A, that's not what I'm looking for. And then B, you also kind of have to wonder, well, if this person leads or they're going to say the same thing about my company and not really super attractive to be honest. I mean, I've been a manager. I've looked at that extent. I'm like, not really the kind of person I want to hire.

Agreed. Yeah, that's totally true. I want to get to bear it. It's great to see you. Anna, it's great to see you as well. and I'm going to go on to Josh going back to flaming dumpster fire this time. Yeah, literally. That's my favorite gift. Mohammed. Yes, this is on Twitter spaces. I'm on Twitter spaces right now. If you can't catch this because I know not many people can watch video during this time. Chelsea comes in, did you specifically apply to this position because those car sales related or is it just a bonus? Yes, to both. I really liked what they were doing. to me it was I think healthy competition and a market is great.

But yeah, I felt like, OK, so it was car sales related to a certain degree. So how could I, you know, it would have been the same thing if I found a startup. It was shoe shining related, right? I was a shoe shineer before it'd be like, hey, I've done this before. I actually know what you're talking about. But I was really impressed with how the company was run. I liked what they were trying to do. So that to me is like, all right, it is a bonus, but I knew I could leverage that experience in a positive way. Absolutely. I think you just popped in my head and made sure there's no right or wrong answer to this.

Do you think it would almost be beneficial for people for people for job seekers, especially junior and their career to maybe go after companies that they've had experience with? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. Like, I mean, granted, if you're a teacher, it might be, there's plenty of ed tech jobs. Yeah, it's funny of ed tech. Yeah, but it's obviously not as honed in necessarily like you're not going to find a startup based on English teachers. Correct. But yeah, I think you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. If you have years and years and years of experience in a field, especially for your first job, like use that, like you're wasting it most to certain degree.

If you don't know how to market it to a different field. Yeah, I've actually never brought that up before. And I think that's a great, I've literally never talked about this. I think that's a great tactic. Like for example, my brother and I both grew up in the restaurant industry and my brother and I have chatted multiple times that one of his dream jobs would be to go work on the tech side of a software that's used in the restaurant industry. Oh, yeah. He knows the restaurant industry. We know how it operates. And really, so originally when I started my recruiting experience, I didn't really see a huge, like my naive self.

I didn't see a huge need in industry experience. But now the older I get, like you need to know how things like, like if I threw a recruiter, who's only recruited mechanical engineers into the software space, like it's totally different. Yeah. Right. The vibes different, everything's different. And so really industry fit matters a ton. Yeah. Chelsea comes in here and goes, yeah, I'm coming from a healthcare background and focusing on health tech for that reason. Yeah. Listen, like if so, so to get more tactical here, right? Chelsea, what I would do is I would like Google that I would Google and research the companies of the type of healthcare you're in, whether it's cancer research or I don't know other things.

Like I would Google those type of companies to go very narrow first. And then I would, I would go to LinkedIn of the companies you like the top 10 cancer research companies in America, right? And I would take those top 10, go to LinkedIn and search the company LinkedIn and start messaging recruiters and hiring managers at that company and start to have conversations. Because I think that's going to really separate you. Dave, I don't know if you anymore thoughts on that. Yeah. I mean, because I know for me one of the best, all right, I guess something that when I left the company I brought up is like my experience as a car salesman and being familiar with makes models stuff like that is we would run into issues where, okay, why wasn't this data populating?

And because of my familiarity with cars, I could be like, okay, well, you know, our API isn't pulling up the right information because this trim level should have this engine or a, you know, so like I had that perspective there that most engineers coming in who weren't super familiar with cars wouldn't know. But it doesn't mean I was a better engineer because of that is just that different perspective. Sure. And even if it's just in the interview process knowing the pain points of the industry you're in, that's going to set yourself apart compared to like, oh, I played for the job because I'm looking for a job, right?

You can sympathize with the manager which gets them a fine mood as well. Yeah, 100%. So I want to go back to knowing your why and demonstrating how else can a junior dev with no experience demonstrate their value because I think that's the biggest thing. I think there's just such this imposter syndrome and I get it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think it's different for everybody, but ultimately, I mean, I don't know if this is going to answer the question the way you want. Sure. But you need everyone needs a mentor or at least some kind of support and I'm really big on getting support outside of social media, not saying social media is this pure evil.

But I think, you know, so I was talking to a junior dev here recently who just got her first job, super proud of her. And we did a one on one few weeks ago and she was talking about how she just like super talented but just striking out on the interviews and something she told me was that when she was with her friends, they could tell she was like super weighed down and super exhausted and they're like, what is wrong with you? You are not the person that you normally are. She had stressed herself so thin that she just wasn't doing a good job. And what's crazy is when she took a break from job interviews just even for a few weeks, just kind of got her head re-centered about a week later, she got an interview.

And that in itself just proves this. Like you have to have people who actually know who you are to give the advice that you actually need. It's not going to be just trite advice that you find on a viral post. It's not going to be just like a 15 minute call here and there. You need people who actually know you. And so I say that because you're not going to know what your truth is until you have someone that's going to help lead you and show you what that is. You're not going to find it on your own. You're going to be super hard on yourself.

You're going to lie to yourself positively or negatively, right? And that's what I talk about how the person who knows me best is my wife because she sees through all the crap. So yeah, a mentor having a solid support group is going to be the best way to figure that out because they're going to see what's good about you and they're going to help you shape that so that it's actually something that would be attractive to a hiring manager. I love that. I also think to, you know, I think mentor opportunities. I think it's a wonderful way to meet other people too, right? I think finding a mentor who can introduce you to their network is huge.

I also want to want to go back to a point that you made about not stretching yourself so thin. So you're the second guest in two weeks that I'm starting to see this theme about actually not burning yourself out on the interviewing process because so I spoke with the guest last week. I forgot who it was, but I'm pretty sure this guest was like, I actually only do interviews if I can on Tuesdays Thursdays. So they were like, if I get any interviews with any companies, I always ask if they have Tuesdays and Thursdays available because like I only stick to those because I want to give myself a break and be fresh.

And I think there's this common theme, right? And I've talked to other hiring managers about giving their devs rest during like sprint cycles and planning that into sprint cycles. And now I'm hearing about, you know, two guests now week after week saying, hey, we need to rest in the interview process. Listen, I don't be don't confuse this with laziness, right? Don't be confused like, well, Taylor and David and Taylor's last guest last week said, like, I can have rest and why can't I find a job? Well, because you're just being lazy at this point. But I think I think time blocking and giving yourself rest.

I think you're a very long way, a very long way. Well, there's definitely a rest the difference between rest and you're right being lazy. You're sitting there after work or whatever you're doing and just binge watching a show for three hours. You're not actually letting yourself rest, right? But going on a walk, reading a book, you can a bath like things like that. Like you're actually letting your body and your mind get that, that healing and that relaxation that you need compared to just you're sitting there watching something you're stimulating yourself over and over and over. Yeah. You've been in front of a screen for 12 hours and you're trying to sleep like that.

Just you're asking for trouble at that point. You really are. You really are. And I think I think bring up a great point yet. Watching three hours of Netflix is not actually rest because your brain is still going and that's something that I've had to be very, very aware of. So as we round out the session this morning, I want to go back. So you've had two dev jobs now in your career. The first dev job was linked in. How did you find the second job? A referral. So talk to me how that happens. Yeah. So what I what I do love about LinkedIn is if you're applying for a job to let you know if you have connections at work at the company.

And with my first job, you just got to the point where I knew I needed to make more. They just being a early startup that weren't able to do that. And we came to that mutual conclusion there. And I was getting ready to apply for a job here locally at H&R Block when I saw that I had a friend who I've known for about 10 years who worked there. I didn't realize he had started there a few months prior. So I was like, hey, you know, I sent a message on LinkedIn. Hey, we should chat. Didn't hear back from him. Went to a party the next day.

He was there. I was like, OK, well, that's very convenient. So we talked about that and he gave me the referral look at that Monday. I sent my resume over Tuesday. They're like, hey, you know what? We'd be interested, but not really sure, you know, kind of just walking through some potential ideas and then come to find out a job opening had just opened up that day. Because they hired someone. He went to a different job. They closed the position. They realized they needed to open. I ended up setting up an interview for Thursday. And then by Friday, I had the job offer. But it was just, yeah, it was amazing timing.

And that's they're very emphatic on not dragging it out. But yeah, I mean, it was just a matter of like, you know what, like not just a random referral, but someone that I've actually known. And I think the majority of us know people who work at companies that could help us out were just sometimes cared to ask, you know. But yeah, it was it was an amazing experience. So few things want to hire here. One, that's a really good feature. So a lot of I love talking to like new people because I learned something. I've learned two things from David now on this live session.

But I love that leveraging the connection feature. So you said when you pull up the job and they have an open job and you press easy apply, you can see well, even before that, it'll say like, you know, you have connections who've worked here, people from your company have been hired here. I'm always looking at that. Like it's a built-in feature. You're you're missing out if you're ignoring it. I love that. I love that. And then, and then, and then of course, obviously, you know, the, the next thing you're really right there is timing. Right. You know, I, I tell people all the time, 75% of the reason why you don't get a job.

And my opinion is not about you. 75% now, that's my take. There may be different takes out there, which I'm sure there is. But in my perspective, a lot of, a lot of the jobs are just timing. And David saw right there. He submitted. He was top of mind. There wasn't, there, there was a job, then there wasn't a job, then there was a job. Yeah. Right. And, but David was top of mind. It's all about timing. So definitely, um, I think it's that, that's why this whole networking game is a long-term thing. It's, it's a constant, um, it's a constant checking in. Right. It's constant checking in.

I may not have a job for David now. I have a job for David six months from now and he taxes me. So incredibly important. Um, Josh comes in and goes, even as seniors who have been hiring managers can be played with imposter syndrome too. This is why you work with outside recruiters and give you help of feedback when inside recruiters may provide boiler plate emails. I will tell you this. The one thing I've realized about interviewing both seniors and juniors on this show is nobody has any idea what to do. Everyone's just trying their best. Seniors, I, you, y'all, the juniors out there, you wouldn't imagine the amount of seniors that DM me that text me and go, oh my gosh, that episode you have with a junior developer resonating with me so much, even though I'm a senior developer and it happens all the time.

And so I think, and this is what I say from an interview mentality. If you can get an interview of saying, we're all just trying to do the best we can. I'm just going to do the best I can. I think that mindset flips. I'm interested your thoughts on that. Yeah. I mean, I will say working with other developers who've been a year, four years, 10 years, yeah, everyone's struggling with something. Everyone still doesn't know like, yeah, I actually don't know. Let's look that up together. Right. Right. I love that about my lead engineer is we're constantly working together. And he's not shited when he doesn't know something, but he has a skill set to figure it out.

Yeah. And yeah, I mean, you're right, we're all trying to figure this out. And that human building goes along with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then Christina comes in. I'm a big fan of Christina. She does offer mentorship for career devs. She's amazing. I would highly recommend that. She's fantastic. All right, David. So I was wrapped up here. I asked this question every guest. We had guidance counselors in middle school. We had guidance counselors in high school. Mm-hmm. But we don't really have them after that. Now they're called therapists for some big fan of it. But what career advice would you give your younger self?

That is a good question. What I would say is, do you a good job no matter where you're working at? I know it's easy to get bogged down with feeling like you're not at your forever job. But every job is going to give you potential to develop good disciplines. You're going to be able to learn how to work on your crappy managers. Right. There's all these different things you can learn. And it's not fruits. You know, I can look back at all my horrible jobs in the past and the way that I've learned how to be a good worker throughout that. And it's helped me now.

Now that I have a good manager, now that I have a good team. Because I've learned how to stick it out. And I've learned how to keep pushing. And I've learned how to be patient. Because not everything happens overnight. And I know we all know this up here. But we're scared of that friction, that conflict of having to wait and push through. But man, I mean, think about like working out, right? And think about sports. You're not going to get, but if you're not going to get fit, the first time you work out. You're going to have to put through, you're going to have to keep conditioning yourself over and over and over again.

And once you get to that point, you look back and you're like, oh man, yeah, now I see why I had to do it. But at the time, you hate it. You hate that burn. So yeah, just not saying to stick with crappy like if it's a bad place, it's a bad place. I get that correct. But I think we just kind of sometimes just assume that if there's any friction at all it must be bad and not take it as a learning experience. I like that. I love that ton. All right. Well, David, thank you so much. Thanks, Taylor hanging out this morning. Any last bits of wisdom or words of encouragement you want to give?

I mean, I'm not like a career coach or mentor, but I'm totally open to talk. I don't do social media anymore. But I do have discord. So I don't know if we can drop that in the chat how that would work or I can do it now. Sure. If you want to DM me, I will throw it up in the comments of the show. Awesome. Yeah. I'll put my contact info in there. I mean, I don't charge anything, but I do one on one's all the time. I love talking to new devs. And yeah, I'm happy to set up a call or something and see how I can help.

I love it. Well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us this morning on Guy's Council 2.0. We have a busy, busy week this week. So David was the first amazing guest to kick it off tomorrow. I have a senior engineering manager from Kroger, Andrew Wai-Borski. This will be his third time on the show. I love Andrew. I love Andrew so much. He's fantastic. And then also, I don't know if you guys know Joe, Joel, love Guy. Joel is all over LinkedIn. He's an amazing recruiter out of Minnesota and he's coming on the show on Wednesday. Oh, my God. And Friday, I actually have one of my team members.

So I'm going to start highlighting my team members on my recruiting team for so y'all can get to know them. So that is Friday. So all right, y'all. Well, my daughter wants to get down from breakfast. So I got to go. You all have a great rest of your Monday. David, appreciate your buddy. No, thank you. All right. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. Because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store.

I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please like right now, unless you're driving it, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T-Dasting on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.