how do you sell yourself w/erik anderson, sr. software engineer at yum! brands

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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 vaco.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdesint. D E S S E Y N. And 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. All righty Morning everybody happy Tuesday You know alright, so so here's the old no one's no one's here yet Eric So I just kind of bullshit Basically, I'm just talking to me and you at this point You're okay I've actually thought about starting just go live backstage like when you and I are chatting cuz like it literally takes like two or three minutes People to kick in Basically, so today for those of you who who will turn tune in here very soon.

It is my birthday I'm 34 years old. I played a ice hockey game last night. My team is on a three game win shoot, but I proceeded to pull my hamstring last night and I can barely walk today. So all that being said, it's things getting older, Eric. Just stay happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, happy birthday with a torn hamstring and catching up with Eric the world's happiest software engineer, which we will get into that and why he said that. But for those of you to tune in. Welcome. Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Say hey, would love to hear from you. The reason so the reason why I say hey, is because this is the networking platform.

I honestly wasn't pitching this as a networking platform when I first started this. This was more of just kind of like a hey, this is like it's basically an infomercial like tune in for eight minutes, 12 minutes and and you know, learn something, get off right. But now what I've realized is that me as an introvert, because I am an introvert, right, I'm pretty hyped up on coffee first thing in the morning. And also I love hanging out with guests like Eric. But one thing I realized is that I would have loved something like this. And what I mean by that is, is when I moved to Nashville to do music, I would have loved some sort of career thing where I could like log on once a day.

It's at 9 30. You should be up already at this point. That's not like my dad, but you should be up already and like to learn something, right? So that's what this is. But the only way to network though on a on a on a live stream I'm like, it's just a comment to say, hey, to throw up your favorite emoji, because here's what's happened, is I've had multiple people on the show find mentors, I've had people get jobs, and I've had people make new friends about the show, on the show, all because people take it upon themselves to DM the people who comment. And I tell people, I said, really, if you're really trying to network and get serious with it, I give you full permission to network on the back of these shows.

So if I were you, I would tune in every day, I would network with every single person that comments, I would DM Eric after the show, but hey, Eric, I saw you on the show. I would then hop over to Unicorn Finders on Thursday. And I would network with every founder and CIO and CTO that I have on the show. And then at that point, if you have been doing that religiously for three years, you would have met a crap ton of people and very, very good people too. So that's what I want this to be. So say, hey, let me know what you're tuning in from.

Finally to ask questions. So the one time where you get really good engineers, engineering leaders on a show live where they can answer your questions and they don't bill you for it. Right? So again, ask questions, take advantage of this, take advantage of Eric. I do want to give some shout outs here for you tuning in Chris. It's great to see you Becky. Oh, that's great to see you David, good morning brother. You don't like it. Yeah, we're 40. Thank you. It's my great skincare routine. Aruna's great to see you Joshua Braden. I love that name Braden. I love that. Michelle, great to see you as always, girl.

Emmett, Chris. Thank you so much, Braden. I appreciate it. All right. So let's go ahead and get started. So Eric, let's get the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? We'll go from there. All right, sounds good. So yes, Eric Anderson, world's happiest software engineer. I'm LinkedIn, hit me up there. I love that so much. I'm a senior software engineer and developer advocate at Young Brands. I've been a software engineer for about the last 10 years. I've developed digital solutions for about 14 different companies in that time frame and was responsible or involved in some way the hiring and staffing process for each of those projects.

So over the last few years, I've taken a lot of that experience bundled it together. And now I coach and mentor junior developers and how to find their first job in tech. So excited to be here with you Taylor to talk about how we can do just that. Absolutely man. So all right so I got to ask I got to ask why the world's happiest engineer because I'm gonna be honest with you Right and listen guys guys gals the reason why I say that I mean this what I say this which is why it's so important that branding and how you position yourself in the market so important I had not met Eric in person But I was going to that conference and I found out Eric was gonna be there and shout out that conference Clark sell make sure you're there in Wisconsin in July I saw it out Eric because Eric had the world's happiest software engineer on his LinkedIn.

I was like, this dude has that as his banner. He must be like super freaking nice and it held true. So Eric, talk about why you did it and the importance of why you did it. Yeah. So going back three years ago, I actually first set that tagline when I was probably the world's unhappiest software engineer. And I was stressed at work. I was having panic attacks. I went to the ER because I was having internal bleeding, there's so much pressure. And a lot of that was just due to my own self-defeating behaviors, beliefs. I wasn't setting boundaries at work, et cetera. So the first thing that I did is I really something had to change.

And just like if you want to exercise more, get into shape, a big part of that is community, a big part of that is public accountability. So the very first thing I did is I wanted the public accountability of being a more positive and optimistic person. So I set that as my tagline. And now it attracts positive energy to me, which I love, like that conversation that you're talking about in our relationship. I mean, I wanted to meet you because of that type of. And it forces me to be positive. And it holds your hand. It holds your hand. Exactly. Notable. And it's difficult, right?

Especially on social media, it's so easy to get divisive. Oh, yeah. It forces me to take a step back, be respectful, and be supportive, and make sure that I am on track with my personal goals, different habits I'm trying to develop a bigger, more optimistic and positive person. So hopefully now I can pay that forward and help you, wonderful people, not getting the same spot I was. I love it. I love it. And Braden, it was, it was really good to see you too, buddy, at that conference. Cody, good morning, Kevin, good morning, Erica. We got everybody here. Emmet, the knees are fine, the left hamstring is not.

All right. So let's, let's talk about why you're here, how to sell yourself. And for those of you who did not watch yesterday's episode with Andrew Wiborski, an engineer, me and Brett Kroger at Cincinnati, we kind of talked about the job search and expression recession right now. And I think this conversation with Eric is such a good, like one, two punch with yesterday's combo. So if you haven't watched yesterday's go back and watch that on my YouTube. But Eric, I mean, just go ahead and start kind of chopping it up here on kind of what you're seeing and just really some words of encouragement, especially for junior devs on how to sell themselves.

Yeah, so the primary thing is how do you get a job without experience? But then how do you get experience if you can't get a job? As I mentioned, most of the advocacy I do online is helping recent graduates or students still in school trying to line themselves up to get that first job. Which has been incredibly difficult. There's I think a large market for people that have two, three years or more of experience. But for that junior level role, even if it's advertised as a junior level role, they still expect one or two years. So you as your thought leadership, you as a recruiter, I'd love to understand your perspective, share some with my own about if you get an application for one of your roles, zero years of experience on it, right?

What about their application would make you comfortable forwarding that along to one of your clients? So one I always love when people interview me on the show because that's always just what you're like, Eric, I'm supposed to be asking you the questions. It's a conversation. I have some perspectives, but I want to make it a conversation. So I'm going to say something very different, or maybe it's not, I'm interested in your response. I immediately reject you in my mind. But what I look for is the engagement and follow up after we originally speak. Right, so for example, so what I do, listen, if you were junior developing, you hit me up, my team can't work with you.

Here's why. Companies can put up one job posting and find 1500 junior devs. Right, so they don't have to pay, they don't pay a Supremeian fee to go out and find junior devs. Now, the reverse sometimes happens sometimes, where it's a company goes, we don't want to deal with the 1500 applicants, just give us the best junior dev you have. So that happens sometimes, but not often. But what I like to see is so I then direct them to my offerings, right? The reason why I started content, the reason why I started Guy in Council 2.0, Eric's to be totally honest with you, is to give back to the junior community.

to the junior community. This show, this show is specifically for junior devs, right? And then whoever else wants to watch. And so what I do then is I send them all my information to get them into my ecosystem. And then I want to see how they follow up. They check in because here's the deal. Here's the deal. If I get one of those roles where we can work on junior dev, you know who I'm going to hit up? I'm going to hit up Emmet. Why? Because Emmet is always on this thing. He's always tweeting at me. He's in my discord, right? He's engaged. So I'm going to reject your application, but I'm going to watch your behavior moving forward on how you engage in the community.

Yeah, a big part of it is you're trying to play the long game. You're essentially talking about building your network, right? Connecting online. Right. Yeah. And you shouldn't start that engagement the day after you graduate from your boot camp, right? You start from day one or even before you start your education, as you can develop relationships like this. I want to share some thoughts here. I don't want to get your response here, Taylor, as I reflect back on my own experience. So I went through the traditional route I got a four-year degree from a university. But by the time I graduated, nobody cared about my degree.

And I'll tell you why. My first job was an unpaid internship that I then leveraged to partner with a professor to help him build something. And then I was so excited and interested, I started my own little LLC and built my own app. So by the time I was actually on the job market post-graduation, I had three line items in my work experience section on my resume and on LinkedIn. So while I was in some people's views, junior developer entry level in many ways you could I position myself as having two years of experience already. And I think now that path isn't, I mean, it takes time.

It does. And it's not always not everybody can necessarily execute on it. But the principles there I want to highlight is the importance of not waiting for somebody else to give you experience, but to give your self-experience. Yes. And I want to go a little bit more with what Eric said, you know, again, and I'm going to give a shout out to Jordan Ryerson. So Jordan Ryerson, he's a junior dev, no bootcamp, no college. He is one of the ones that are trying to pull himself up by his bootstraps and make it happen. And he reached out to me one day and he goes, hey, Taylor, do you have any projects?

He goes, hey, my name's Jordan. He introduced himself. You got to give me projects. Well, at the time I needed kind of a new website built for the unicorn finders, one of my many endeavors that I have going on. And he was like, surely he goes, do you care about writing or no do to have had it and he built it. And Eric checked it out right before he here. If you go to the unicornfinders.com, that is built by a junior dev with no boot camp, no experience. And he did a fantastic job. Eric, I can't share my screen, but if you want to share your screen real quick, you can.

Yep, yep. I think you should be able to. Sure, sure. Oh, wait, here we go. Yep. I can find it. It's totally fine. It's totally fine if it doesn't work, but I was just, it looked like you were going to like pull it up. Yeah, yep. I was just, you see it? Or you? So, so again, right? Like this was built by junior dev, no bootcamp, no college, no nothing. I wanted him to give it a shot and he built it and I think for what we needed we just needed a really static site You know, it's just kind of showcase what's going on maybe some redirects back to our website But again, he did a fantastic job So again like ask right all you got to do is ask and and I think when it comes down to it And this is our kind of client list and kind of who we've had on so again great job shout Jordan but always ask, right?

There's going to be a nonprofit. There's, you know, there's going to be a nonprofit. There's going to be a church, a religious institution that are that's going to need help, right? And so if you start that way and you can get one to two years of experience doing your own thing, listen, I say I haven't said this story a lot and then we'll move on to a little bit more details after this, but I had one developer hit me up two or three years ago. It was up to be in the pandemic or right before 2019. right before 2019. And he sent me his resume.

I was like, man, you got a great resume. And his resume was written great, two year reactive, like just kind of in our sweet spot, right? Kind of at two, two, three year. And I was like, man, this is fantastic. I was like, I was like, how much have you been getting paid? He goes zero, zero dollars. I said, I'm sorry, what? I was like, what do you mean zero dollars? He goes, I've been volunteering my time after hours for this company for the last two years. And here's the deal. I didn't know that his resume looked like full time 40 hours a week. And so again, just because you're doing something like five hours a week, like I pulled the audience the other day, like a year or two ago on the average amount of time, developers are spending hands on the keys coding, the most consistent answer is 25%.

So if you're coding, like eight hours, eight hours a week, five hours a week, you're basically there as an actual developer. So again, make sure your stuff notates. Derek, I didn't know if any more thoughts on that. Yeah, so there are a few resources that I recommend. And can I throw them in the chat if I put a comment and people would say it. Yeah, can you post in the public comments by chance? Can you do a couple more? Comments, no, I cannot. Okay, I'll always mention some of these. Throw it in our private chat and then I'll copy and paste into the main chat.

Sounds good. So there are resources out there for a developer to do exactly what you're talking about, right? Maybe you don't know of a small Mon Posh shop that might need something. Maybe you're not connected with a religious institution. Here are a few. So Code for America, Donate Code, ragtag.org. These are all organizations. You're not going to get paid, but they're non-profits that need help. Right. And from my perspective, if you're putting in, you know, as Taylor, you're talking eight, 10, you know, 20 hours a week, helping them in your free time, you can totally put that as work experience on your resume and you can totally speak to the projects that you've worked on and use that as your differentiator.

I love that. I love that. Yeah, y'all go try. I can only post on YouTube. So, so I just do it up here. Go go check out those those ones and also Bill proud of you, man. Just start with a nonprofit. This week is volunteer dev. Again, I love that. I definitely definitely what it takes. I'm going to throw these up to Eric. Yeah, the last ones I just put in here, these aren't nonprofits. These are just organizations, kind of in apprenticeship programs, great resource for trying to get the experience of working as a team, solving real-world problems that you can put on your resume for some of our work experience.

So instead of iterating on your portfolio project, you know, your to-do app, your weather tracker, the typical kind of entry-level portfolio project, instead of doing that by yourself, find a partner with organizations that legitimizes your experience. You can put it on your resume. It also gives you the experience of working on a team. You're solving real world problems. All of these are powerful stories that you can then use to add to your interview. Absolutely. Um, so, so let's go on again. I mean, I'm kind of looking at the notes you sent. So, so let's go, let's go over. Um, so we kind of talked about resume a little bit, just in sense of getting work history.

What do you look at your LinkedIn, man? I mean, do you have tips for for devs, especially when it comes to LinkedIn? Yes. So really. From, and yeah, I'm going to throw the question right back at you, Taylor, right? So there's a concept in software development called search engine optimization, SEO, right? When you search for unicorn finders on Google, why does your website come up first, right? Well, one is that that's the title, but it's also how you structure your website so that Google indexes your site as, or it perceives it as more relative to that search criteria. Right. So it's the same thing for your LinkedIn, right?

There are certain skills that Taylor, I'm sure you use certain keywords that you use when you're searching for a developer. I imagine it's probably like the primary language or framework, so you'll say React. Yeah, and then the secondary language. So.net, React. that react, react node JavaScript, maybe TypeScript. Your profile should be littered with those keywords, right? So can I show my LinkedIn here? Yeah, absolutely. If you wanna go ahead and share it and I'll throw it up. Okay. So my profile is optimized for, not for a software development role, because I'm doing my own thing as a content creator, but the principle here will show you what I'm talking about.

If I were a software engineer, right, in my headline here, I would put at the very end that little pipe symbol, react, pipe, node, pipe, and probably your top three skills, depending on your skill set. Then you can turn on creator mode. And you can select the hashtags that you are optimizing for. So I would say hashtag react.js hashtag node. Then I would have in my featured section, so you have an example here. This is an example portfolio project I built. I would have my keywords listed here too. So react if I was doing for a mobile developer role. In my about me section, I would list what's again.

And I would list them high enough so that the recruiter searching it does not have to click C more. There you go. Right. You're one of the very few people that have gone that specific about user behavior with the C more. Mm hmm. Absolutely. And then you list your skills, associate them with your work experience. Yep. So, and then you can do the same thing for your, okay, what I got, projects. You can list, you can associate, you can list the projects that you worked on. And then I would go and I would seek out endorsements. Yes. If you're part of a boot camps, there's usually some cohort, right?

There's 20, 30 of you. You should all be endorsing each other. And you should ask for endorsements and endorse others. and then you should complete your skill assessments for those three skills. Stay away from the broad ones. I find if you do something like web development as a skill, it's so broad that the quiz is impossible. But if you do it targeted, then to one of the, like the react that the big primary ones are recruiters gonna search for, you'll be good. Yeah, I love that. And again, I mean, you know, there's, you know, I do a lot of tweeting about LinkedIn versus Twitter and kind of my thoughts on it.

And I get a lot of people, a lot of hate, unlinked in like it's spammy, yada yada. And like listen, like you should be, I just read the other day, I said I got pitched to basically like invest in bounce houses. I don't know, it wasn't quite bounce houses, but it was kind of ridiculous like that. And like it happens, like, you know, wherever there is a social networking aspect to something that there is going to be spam and junk, right? But I will tell you this, I think as junior devs, If you can spend, what I say is I would spend an hour every day on LinkedIn, at least, at least if you're a junior dev.

I think the job search I talked about yesterday is an eight to five type thing. It's not a two hour thing. But I would say, I would stay on for an hour. The first 15, 20 minutes is posting content. Second 15, 20 minutes is connecting or liking and calming other people's statuses. And then the third 15, 20 minutes is sending people's DMs. Eric, I saw you something up here. Yes, you got to be excited. So LinkedIn has this concept of spotlights. These are different search criteria that a recruiter can use to make sure that the people they reach out to are actually are more likely to respond.

So this LinkedIn spotlights, one of the things you're talking about are they more likely to respond as one of the criteria. So this looks at how active you are on LinkedIn, are you responding? I haven't. I haven't. I haven't. Definitely gone over this or any of the documentation. So I'm glad you're in reinforcing what I've been saying all along. Yeah, yeah, if you're responding to email, if you're commenting on other people's posts, LinkedIn says, hey, you're more likely to respond to a recruiter reaching out to you, thus they're gonna show your profile a higher up in the search results. And that's really what it's all about, right?

How many resumes could you craft? Now let's say you're crafting specific to a role. So you're spending that time to update your line items to target a specific opening. So how many of those could you fill out in a day? I probably think less than five. If you're really trying to be thorough and be prepared for a role, contrast that with what? 50 plus million companies on LinkedIn. I think last I saw there was over 15 million recruiters who I don't doubt it. Which means sure not everybody's looking for a react developer. But on any given day, there are hundreds of not thousands of recruiters who are looking for somebody just like you.

So instead of just piecemeal one at a time applying to a role, if you have a good LinkedIn profile, you are going to be exposed to thousands of opportunities every day. Yeah. And that's, and that's what we want to do here. These spotlights, I think there's a lot of money here. We can dive deeper. Taylor, because they talk even more about engaging with the brand, following that company, following recruiters at that. Okay. All of these are parts of the algorithm that LinkedIn uses to promote a person's profile. I love it. Yeah. And I think this is great. I'm glad you brought this up. I mean, you know, LinkedIn is just like a TikTok.

It's like a, you know, Twitter. It is a social platform that's got to own algorithm. And so the more you can do, the more you can be engaged on the platform, the more visibility you will bring to fly. I mean, Eric, I mean, I want to brag on you for a second. You know, as you were scrolling across your LinkedIn page, I saw your profile views. Eric has 121,000 profile views in the last seven days or impressions right? So 121,000 eyeballs have seen his stuff in the last seven days. Like listen, now Eric has been doing this. This is what he does. He creates content.

He gives back. But the thing is though is like LinkedIn is just so powerful right now. LinkedIn is the professional TikTok right. TikTok whatever it like it is what it is. If you're selling t-shirts be on there and I don't want to go to down the marketing front. But like really if you're if you're as long as you aren't selling t-shirts for coffee mugs, you need to be on LinkedIn and you need to be active. And that is your central place of network. And it takes a while to get there, right? I'll be honest, when I first started posting, I was posting because I wanted a job.

I was in that bad spot. Yeah, I wanted to be in a good spot. And that was about three years ago. And I want to say I didn't know the algorithm or the keyword optimization. I didn't know how to network or when to post bubble, blah, blah. My first year, very little traction. And it was demoralizing, right? But after that year, there was an explosion of engagement and a lot of it's just about consistency and starting early. Yep, absolutely. So as we wrap up our time, your time flies when you have a phone with friends. Basically, so I wanna go over, so there's two more topics that obviously you had some pretty good thoughts on.

We talked about portfolio projects, but let's talk about type of social validation, degree certifications, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, I'll give my thoughts, but even a degree certifications, I don't know, just give me your thoughts on all that. Yeah, so my opinion after my own experience when I graduated, nobody cared about my degree, and I was only a month or two after graduation before graduation was doing these networking events, that recruiters were more interested in my work experience. And I talked about that previously. So what I would say is, I think it's still important to get some sort of credential to some social validation, but don't rely on that alone to get you your first job.

To me, being part of a credential program or the Bootcamp or school. A big part of it, which I don't think they emphasize enough and they didn't emphasize at my school, is that networking component. I wish I connected more with other students. I wish I asked them to endorse me and I endorsed them, right? I wish I connected and stay connected with a more post-graduation. A lot of it is that cohort that you graduate with. Not necessarily a degree, because even if you get a graduate level degree, which I eventually did, a year post-graduation, nobody cares anymore, right? Isn't that crazy? Yeah, and it doesn't even matter where you go, right?

So I went to Brigham Young University, I could have gone to the University of Utah, I could have stayed in state and gone to UGA. They're all the same. Gross. Yeah. Yeah. So now there's a conversation about the cost benefit analysis, right? You might as well go to this cheaper. And my wife talked about that too. She went to SCAD for photography. She was like, I didn't learn anything. Yeah, you might as well go to where's cheaper. And really what it's the network and that school's brand is gonna be more important than like the quality of their program. Cause you get a CS degree from any public university, it's really the same.

Yeah, agreed. Yeah, and Anthony comes in. I graduated back in 2000 low in my CS degree. No one has asked about my degree. They've asked about my freelance contract work. Yeah. I mean, I, and I think to somebody tweeted me this yesterday, they're like, or either tweet it or I gave a recent presentation somewhere and somebody asked her like, well, well, how do you network? Like, like, like if you could summarize, how do you network? What would it be? And this is what I said. I said, it's a bunch of tiny micro interactions that you keep up with and then turn it into a relationship.

Right. So for example, I've done this in like an, I eat my own dog food, right? I mean, I really, really do. Everything I say here is everything I've implemented. This is not even professional, right? So there's this guy, his name is Brian. Brian Gans is his name. Brian, if you're watching this, I doubt it because he's one in California, he's in the fitness space. So he's not gonna watch this. But Brian, Brian popped up on my Instagram years ago because Brian loves fitness, he loves hockey, he loves coffee. I mean, he and I are like BFFs when it comes to that, right? Except he's way more in shape than I am.

And so basically he, he popped up on my Instagram and I followed him. Okay. Then he would like some of my stuff because he saw it, then he followed me back. Right. So then he started like my stuff and I started like his stuff, right? And you're like, Taylor, this sounds like you have like a crush on a girl. You're me out. You're me out because this is what networking is. Then it was, I would respond to his story on Instagram and then he'd respond to my story on Instagram. I'm going to spare you all the details. as lone behold, he is flown out to see me three or four times now.

He's awesome. He spent the weekend. He and I have played hockey tournaments together now. It all started because of these the liking each other's posts on Instagram. I think that's what networking is. Eric, you said it yourself. I didn't know how to network in college. If I were to have networked in college, I would have taken out my LinkedIn. There's a QR code. And in every single group project, I would have connected with everybody. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and so I think, um, uh, that's the type of stuff that, that, that you got to do. And that's what networking is. And it's really about being authentic, right?

People get so nervous about like putting forth this, you know, professional demeanor. Uh, we, we joke on LinkedIn. I mean, in a, I, I am myself, but I like to think I'm my best self. Right. I'm not swearing and whatnot. I'll link in. And a lot of it is about I try to give more than I receive. Always. So I come and I post more. I give out free advice more than I ask for subscribers, followers, subscriptions, et cetera. So for me, I think a good model is like 80, 20. Even if you're looking for a job and the primary reason that you're there is to get a job.

Every post should not be give me a job, give me a job. Can somebody refer me? Please help me try to put positive energy, try to support others and that the karma will come back to you. I love that. All right. Eric, three rapid questions as we wrap it up here. First because it's my birthday. What is your favorite birthday cake? Ooh, that is a lemon cake with icing on top. My mom made it all growing up. It's like, I see though, we doing buttercream, cream cheese. I don't know if I was icing. It's that white sugar. I think it's buttercream. It's probably buttercream. My mom made it to me all growing up.

And then my wife started making it for me when I got married. And it's like, I'm 35, Kayleigh. You're a young-end to me at 34. That's 35 years of that same cake every year. OK, I have to ask, I hope your wife's not watching. And if you don't want to answer, I understand who makes the better cake, your wife or your mom. Okay, it took a few years. Okay. But my wife is a lot more liberal with the sugar and she added, yeah, she added sprinkles on the top too. So you get that nice. Or danger. Are they colored and sprinkles like the one colored sprinkles?

Yeah, that's a little crunch on it. Love that. So good. All right. Next question. What tools, technologies, trends, are you watching or using right now that you want to share with others that they should look beyond a lookout for. And don't say chat GPT or open. Yeah. Tools, insights, et cetera. The thing I'm most excited for is next week, I am actually partnering with the hired dot com team, okay, giving a presentation on their state of software engineering. Oh, hell yeah. Specifically around finding your first finding a job in technology. They just finished a comprehensive year long study of their, they have like 63,000 plus candidates on their platform and job opportunities.

So anyway, really excited about the insights we'll be sharing next week. So I just want to plug that. I love that. I think there's a lot of takeaways that will be helpful for this audience. That's awesome. I love that. Final question. So this show is called Guidance Councilor 2.0 for many reasons. But the main reason why was because we had Guidance Councilors in middle school, high school and college. But really now as adults, we don't have them as much. We have therapists, which I'm a big fan of, big fan of mental health. but we don't really have a guidance counselor, right? So that's what I wanted, that's why I named this podcast, guidance counselor 2.0.

What would be your biggest piece of career advice you would tell your younger self? Yeah, to spend more time working on identifying and working on things you wanna work on and not necessarily what your company wants you to work on. So this is part of what put me in a bad place. Okay. You start, there are some things that are expedient for the company to accomplish. Maybe there's a legacy platform that need to be maintained or some project that they wanna do, but it's not the tech, isn't it very fun. Then very quickly become an expert in old technology or something that you don't enjoy working with.

And then all of a sudden now it's difficult to find a job for the exciting things, the things that you actually do enjoy. So I would say be intentional at your company to let them know what you enjoy working on and make sure if you're not getting it there, you're getting it in your free time and you're developing that skill set. So you don't pigeon yourself in a role or opportunity that you're not thriving in. Yep, I love that, awesome. Well, Eric, thank you, my friend. That was a blast. I really appreciate you a ton. Everybody, I hope you enjoyed this. Please go connect with Eric on LinkedIn.

Eric, what's your Twitter handle? Eric B. Anderson, E-R-I-K Anderson with an E. I love it, I love it. So go follow Eric. Thank y'all for tuning in this morning. Tomorrow, I'm really excited. Tomorrow, I have Nas Delum. So Nas was a former engineering major at Netflix. Now she's an engineering major at LinkedIn. This is my very first LinkedIn guest. So I'm really excited to have her on. And then Thursday, unicorn finders. We have open sauce. So kind of along this kind of vein about, you know, open source, giving back. Brian Douglas, I met at Render ATL last year. and Brian Douglas has developed basically a ecosystem to get free work too, right?

And to give back. And so open sauce, we're interviewing him on Thursday and then Friday, we were back with an OSHA with recruiters anonymous. So Eric, thank you, my friends. Stay on real quick as I end so I can say bye to you. But y'all have a great one. We'll see y'all tomorrow. Peace. 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, then don't do it. So, thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. Destin on all social media handles, And I hope you have a fantastic day.