renderatl ready (solo show)

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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 tdsintdessey. 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. Everybody, hello, hello, hello, happy Tuesday. I've already I've already said it's Monday a few times today, but it's not today's Tuesday. Excited to be with you all today. Lots of go over. Lot to go over and I'm excited to hang out with you all today.

Get the notifications that we're going live. TikTok Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, what's going on. Today is render ATL prep render ATL prep. And you're probably like, Taylor, what is render ATL prep? What is render? What is render ATL? I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, but for those of you tuning in, welcome, say, hey, please let me know where you tune in from. Today is going to be conference prep. So if you are planning on going to any sort of conference, let's say, let's say you come across my page and you're like an accounting finance person. You're like, Taylor, I don't know what render is.

I don't know what tech is. I'm going to keep scrolling. No, no, wait, wait, wait, stay here. Stay here. This today is going to basically be a framework of how to navigate conferences. So before we dive in on navigating tech conferences in today's world, I want to just say, hey, please let me know where you tune in from. I would love to hear from you today. It says the last day, the last guidance cards are 2.0 for the week. I will be at render ATL. I am one of the official hosts for render this year. I will be on stage three. So if anybody's coming to render, I'm on stage three.

Your boy is MC in stage three. Come say, hey, let's get a picture together. Give me a hug. It'll be good to see everybody there. But for those of you who are not going to render ATL, this morning live show is about conferences. How to navigate conferences. If you plan on going to any sort of conferences, tech, not tech, anything related. And also to to be honest with you, this applies the meetups too. We're going to talk about how do you navigate? How do you navigate the in person landscape that is meetups and conferences? We're going to talk about today. So please say, hey, the reason why I tell people, say, hey, is listen, this is a networking event right here.

This is a networking event. You're saying, hey, you're showing up. We're not in the metaverse yet though, right? We're not in the metaverse yet. We don't have goggles on. So there's nobody. No one's going to be able to know. No one's going to be able to know if you're watching if you don't comment. So please comment, say, hey, there's a lot of people on the show. I'm not kidding with you. There's people on the show that have found jobs that have found internships, have found other friends. So even if you watch this in the future, please say, hey, there's people that come back through and network.

So please do that. Next thing, ask questions, right? I'm going to go over again the tips and tricks of how to navigate the job search. I know the job search. I'm sorry, conferences, conferences. That's my normal line. We're going to navigate tech conferences this morning. So please ask some questions if you have them. I will definitely answer them again. TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. It's great to see y'all this morning. All right. I want to get to first off some partnership shout out first off. I want to give a shout out to talenttest.ai. Listen, I think a lot of people in the interview process try to jump into interviewing, like they're trying to jump into running a marathon, right?

So last yesterday, I don't know if anybody did MIRF yesterday, the workout MIRF. I did. I'm shout out to those who have served for our country. We appreciate you. I appreciate you. So MIRF is a workout where you run two miles and then you do 100 pull ups, 200 pushups, 300 air squats. So I did it yesterday. And I feel a lot of people jump into the job search, not preparing for something like MIRF, right? You kind of have to prepare all year for MIRF through different workouts. Well, talenttest.ai is a way to start building your muscle for interviewing. It is a great tool. I like it.

Is it a earth-shattering tool that's going to give you so many questions and answers and you're just going to be, listen, there's no silver bullet. I think this is a great study guide. It's a great way to get your head and shape or mind and shape head in the right direction. I like to mix up saints. So check that out. Talenttest.ai used the word Taylor for a few bucks off. And then also to listen, that conference. I'm talking about render right now, but also that conference. I'm key noting that next month in July. Well, may June, yeah, next month July. Go check that out. They have coffee beans right here.

Coffee coffee. It's legit. I promise. And I'll see you in July at the conference. Want to get to a few more shout outs here. Let's see here. Teyats, good to see you. Riley, Fritz and Mark, Manuel. So Fia Lammer, it's good to see you, Major Renderer Fomo. Listen, I understand. I understand Chris. Duwain, hope to see you, big dog, Michelle. Jason from St. Louis. I love it. I'm headed to ATL one day earlier for render. I love it, Michael. Hope you see you there. Good morning from the ATL. So excited to be going to render. I love it. Render soon, high from Tennessee. Ricardo, Robert.

Teyats, I hope to see you there too. Riley, got to get out there. It's a good one. Tune in to this in my first tech conference. I love it, Michael. So we're going to do some stuff. Timmello, it's great to see you. LinkedIn user, good morning, good morning, and dawn. From George, it's good to see you. Anyone else from George, or go tech? I love it. I haven't had any many at Georgia Tech fans on. Alex, good to see you. Love it, it's great to see you. LinkedIn user. I'm actually here for a change. I love it. I'm glad you're here, LinkedIn user. Nick, it's good to see you.

Dev. I'm glad to see you. Shame on social plug. Hey, everyone. I'm a senior. There you go. I love it. Go connect with Riley. I love it. Those are some really smooths. I'm honestly impressed. Thank you so much. I just talked really fast. Usually goes over really quickly. I told you, I'll see you off. Not as great to see you as well. All right, cool. It's going dive in. Enough me running my mouth this morning. All right. So first off, let's talk conferences right now. All right. So I'm, again, I'm framing all this for render, because I'm about to leave for an I'm leaving this afternoon.

So I'm framing this for render. These, again, this goes for every conference, every meetup that you go to. First off, plan your sessions. What sessions are you going to? Do you know what sessions you're going to? Why do you, why do you want to go to those sessions? Right. Again, I think, I think you really need to figure out what your goal is for a conference before you go there. Right. Is it just to meet a ton of people and you don't really care about the topics? That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Go meet a crap ton of people. Do you really, really want to learn?

You don't really care about networking, which is fine. You just want to learn. You want to be a sponge. That's fine. Do you want to just go party the entire time? That's fine too, because you're still going to meet people. But at the end of the day, you need to figure out what your goal is. Right. And if you're, if you're like, hey, well Taylor, all this is, it's all the same. That's fine. So then let's move on. The next thing is who are you going to see? Right. Render's got some amazing, like in my mind, some of the most star studded pack sessions there is.

And so you need to figure out where you want to go to. Right. And listen, you're going to get foam out. You're going to get foam out. And listen, that's okay. That's okay. You're going to listen. All of these conferences again, whether it's render or whether it's anywhere else, you can't go to every single session. Right. So really, really be strategic. I even spent yesterday. I'm MC in stage three again, shout out stage three. I'm MC in stage three. But, but like the thing is, is I still last night, I still last night got open my computer and I planned my social activities for the week, right?

Because I'm locked into one stage, but I planned on my after event. So be intentional. Right. Next thing, right? When you go to the events, take notes, but here's, here's the biggest hack. Here's the biggest hack to get noticed by some of these speakers. Create content for them. Create content for them. Let me explain this. And this goes for every conference, every meetup. I know a lot of y'all bring your laptops or bring a pen and paper. I would, I would, if I were you and I would go in a tech event, I would download Twitter or create a Twitter profile today. Again, I'm talking about render, but this goes for everything for tech.

Create a Twitter profile and go follow all the speakers. And then tweet at them and summarize their talks because I will tell you this. One, all these speakers that go to these events love content. They love having content done for them. So if you tweet live tweet, do a thread of the entire session of what you learn. one, not only are you documenting two, you're creating content for the other person. Three, when you go up and introduce yourself, they know who you are. Because I will tell you this, I'm a speaker as well. Every time I get off the stage, guess what I go to immediately.

I go to my phone and I see who's posted pictures or who's posted tweets. So if you do that and you do that for every single talk you go to, not only you're going to learn a ton, but you're going to network a ton. Right. So that's another one. Next topic, right. And also, by the way, if y'all have tips and tricks, please fill them up there. want to highlight again, how to navigate conferences. The next thing rest. You say it again. Rest. Rest. Okay. Here's the deal. Your body like going to an event like render takes a toll like without alcohol, right? Like I don't drink that much without alcohol.

It takes a toll on me because I'm an introvert, right? Schedule time to rest. There is nothing wrong for taking an hour to block out of your afternoon to go to your hotel room and have peace and quiet and just veg out. Right. The reason for that is this is a marathon. Not a sprint. Render is a very long conference, right? There's an entire day of there's a entire day of workshops and then Thursday and Friday are all sessions. So really, really, really spend the time to take care of yourself because what you don't want to do is overextend yourself the first day or two and then you're completely exhausted.

You've lost your voice, right? You stayed out too late and then you can't maximize your last two days there. And on top of that, you don't want to get sick coming back home. The health side of things is incredibly important, right? Listen, I'm not a health guru, but I will tell you this. Alcohol takes a toll on your body, right? Alcohol and eating bad takes a toll on your body. So I'm just cautioning you if you want to get the max amount of time out of this for the next four days, you need to treat it like a work event, right? You need to treat it like order.

Now, now I'm not saying have fun. I'm not saying have fun, but I'm saying be aware of how your body reacts. For me, if I eat bad food and I drink, I am awful. I am awful the next day so you need to take care of yourself. The next thing, which is a big thing I saw right here. It is a conference tip, save a screenshot of your LinkedIn QR code and flash the folks you want to connect with. Save time, not really sure. Yes. So here's the deal. I will take this. This is the most important hack the entire week again for render and also any tech conference you would tend to.

This is this is yeah, Dr. T coming in. You give these old folks tips. Listen, I'm old. I'm old, I'm not old, but I feel old. I have an old soul 34 years old, but I feel like my soul is like 80. Yeah, take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. So yeah, conference tip here, save a screenshot of your LinkedIn QR code. Listen, the biggest thing. Here's the deal. Mindset shift here, mindset shift. Everybody at a conference wants to network. We say that one more time. Every person at a conference for the most, but I can't speak in the absolute something to the internet because people get mad at me.

For the most part, everybody at a tech conference or at a conference or at a meetup wants to network. Don't be afraid to go up to somebody and just cold. Hey, hey Taylor, my name's Chris and just start talking to me. But here's the deal. Make it quick. Make it memorable. Right? If you follow that person for a long time and love their content, like for example, if I didn't know Dr. T, if I didn't and I want to give props for props to do, Dr. T is taking the taking the world by storm with her content. If I didn't know Dr. T and I was following Dr.

T for a bit, I go up to Dr. T, but hey, listen, I love your content. I love your content. Can we please connect? I want to stay in touch. Scan, connect, connect on LinkedIn with the QR code thing in the jigger. Then move on. Now, Dr. T is wonderful. She'll talk to you for a long time, right? Which is great. Me on the other hand, I might not talk to you on a long time. Why? Because I'm shy and I'm an introvert. I just have black coffee right now. Let's get me through this morning. Right? But again, I've heard people say, well Taylor, I need to develop a 30 minute elevator pitch to like to a 30 minute elevator pitch.

So, you know, I can network. No, no, no, listen, there are people out there that want to talk for 30 minutes for the most popular people who want to talk for 30 minutes for you. Right? Five minutes, three minutes. Hey, Taylor, I love your content. Big fan, can we connect on LinkedIn? Absolutely. Shoot me a DM. Yaddie out. I'll follow up afterwards. Right? Here's the second part. Let's talk about follow up. This is a lot of work. Going to tech conferences is a crap. If you listen, I'm going to say this. If you do tech conferences correctly, render or anybody else, it is a crap ton of work.

Because not only do you need to go and connect with every single person there on top of that, you need to follow up with every single person for the most part that you meet. Right? It's important to get people in your ecosystem in the front end on the back, I don't know which way the screen is going on the back end. You need to follow up with people and make you make yourself remember so many people never follow up. And even myself, I'm guilt. I get so busy. Listen, we're taking three, four, five days off work. I see some people like taking the entire week off work.

You're going to be behind. You're going to be behind. That's what I'm saying. I see in the hour or two that you have downtime, send DM. Hey, listen, it was so nice to meet you again. Let's hang. You know, you want to love the chat. You got it. But the follow up is so, so dang important. I want to get to some questions and some people here. Let's see here. Dev, it's good to see you. Michelle, it's good to see you. Ray, my guy, will. What's up, big dog. Yeah, so conference, how did that plan the events I want to go the last week? I love that.

The social content is how I got signed. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So again, the social content. Again, if you as a speaker, if you tweet at me or as a host, if you come take pictures of me and post them, I'm going to repost you. You come up to me and be like, hey, Taylor, I'm like, oh, shit, you're the one who just take pictures of me. I really appreciate the conversation is so much easier. Do not see how that works. Like if you give something, I'm going to give back to you. Right. It's so incredibly important. Literally, boom, right here. And I'm not paying, Dev literally got my first job because my now CEO have a talk that I live tweeted.

There we go. Yes, Jerome comes in and choose the right covers of those pocket ones are often most useful. Yeah, 100% again, right? Like be intentional, right? Not all conferences are the same. Be intentional. Do your research, right? Incredibly incredibly important. Let's see here. Ritu, it's good to see you question. If we can, our Twitter username to attending a render, how do we change it back? Yes. So this is actually a great nuance question. And I'm glad she brought this up. The Twitter, again, I don't want to get into Twitter blue and the whole like Elon Musk thing. But at the end of the day, it is, it is, it is important.

The Twitter game is important. You can change your name, but then it takes another week or two after you're done with the event. I'm not going to change my name. People who follow me are going to let you know. Anna, if you want to change it, there's nothing wrong with change it. There's nothing wrong with change your name. I didn't mind to get hijacked mind just mind, you can't change your name for like two weeks after you change it. Stupidest thing ever. But I don't think it's a bad idea. So Anna, I would go ahead and change it if you want to. You don't get hijacked or anything.

You just can't change your name back to just Anna after the event for like two weeks. Yeah, save LinkedIn QR code. Absolutely. Let's see here. More, more QR code. Let's see here. Sorry, Dr. The L of that. That's here. Badges. Yeah. I mean, again, right? Yeah, like again, you have permission to talk going to that conference mark. I can't wait to see you there, man. Once you're almost forgot about the QR codes. Let's see here. Pac-Man role. If you're standing in a group talking at a conference, a circle can make it challenging for new people to join you. But if you leave a space, ah, I love this so, so much from Chris.

Yes, if you are talking to people, right? So let's say you're talking one on one. I feel like Chris Deelia right now, do you know Chris Deelia? He like talked with his hands a lot. If you're talking to somebody one on one, that's fine. If there's more people open your body up, right? Open your body up to allow other people to come in. I will tell you this as an introvert. I may be like perusing the halls. Like if I see a spot where I can slide in, right? I'm going to do it, right? So incredibly, incredibly important. Let's see here. Simple, cancel blue. Okay, I need to do that.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Let's see here. All right, what else? So we got the planning. We got the networking. Oh, also two networking events, right? Again, like, be cool, be chill, be responsible, right? Listen, I'm going to tell you this. I feel like a dad here, if like a mom, no one likes someone be sloppy, right? I'm just going to say that again. You don't want to be the talk of the town, right? Listen, stuff gets around like this a lot. You don't want to be a talk of the town. So be responsible for that. Again, that's my dad talk. What else? Let's see here.

Rest. Is anybody else? Did I forget anything? Research, network, create content, get rest. Follow up afterwards, incredibly important. Am I missing anything else? I think that's it. I think those are like the survival 101 tactics for conferences. Let's see. Oh, Discord, Discord Slack, render's got a Discord. A lot of that conference has a Slack channel. Get in the Slack post often, provide value, be funny. You understand something? Like I want you to be you, right? I want you to be you, but also to like try to be memorable in some way, right? Be intentional, be enthusiastic, right? Like when I talk to me at a conference, it's just a funny study.

I'm like, oh, don't want to talk to that person again, right? Be energetic. I'm telling you, if you do render correctly, when I say render correctly, I mean, you network, you take notes, you're engaged. You should be absolutely exhausted by the end of this week. And that goes for every single tech conference. That conference, momentum, you know, shout out momentum and Cincinnati. If you do it correctly, you should be exhausted, but you should also be fulfilled, right? One of the biggest things I hear time and time again is that, you know, people are exhausted, but they are fulfilled after this. Let's see here. Get people talking about topic they won't shut out about, right?

I, ideally something you can engage with. Yeah. Ask questions. Hey, hey, man, hey, gal, you know, hey, what do you do? Right? Like, what are you passionate about? Right? Again, we're at this event. Everybody here, everybody here, is incredibly important. And everybody wants to talk and has things to talk about. So engage people. I love it. Dr. She also don't be astute. You will learn more about people when they're hanging out chilling, even if it's not your scene. Drink water and have a good time. Bring up a point. Yeah, yeah, again, right? I mean, yeah, use this time to ask questions, right? Everybody loves to hear themselves talk.

I do this show because I'd love to hear myself talk, right? A lot of people in tech love to hear themselves talk. Use that to your advantage, right? Like, like if I meet with a person and they're engaged, they're asking me all these questions, like, man, this person's impressive, right? It's so, so true. Also here, dad talk here. Well, dad, make sure, especially as a male conference, you're keeping eye out for others in your group. Yes, I love that so much spike drinks. Yeah, be responsible. Absolutely. It's 100% important. Totally agree with this LinkedIn user on this. And yeah, momentum, hype, I love it. All right, y'all, I think that's it.

I think that's it. I hope y'all just have a great, oh, here we go. Here we go. Scott coming at the very end. I love it. Can you talk about finding conferences that are best for your purposes? Content is great, but knowing what to search and how to identify the conference is going to have a good before. Yeah. All right, so conferences, so I'm going to be honest with you. It took time for me to find out about engineering conferences. It's really what's important to you. And you're going to have to do some research. Like for example, like if I wasn't interested in engineering conferences and I was interested in just staffing conferences, then that's something that I would research.

I would get online, type in recruiter conferences or staffing conferences. If you're passionate about, if you're passionate about JavaScript, Google JavaScript conferences, it's going to take a little bit of time on your end to do some research to find, you're to find where you want to go. It's just pure research. For me, from engineering conferences, the way I find out about other engineering conferences is do Twitter. I actually have a Twitter list. If you want to follow it, it's all the conferences that I find. It's literally it's Taylor's conferences on Twitter list. And so anybody can follow it, it's open. But yeah, Scott, it's just going to take some research on your end.

And if you want to follow with me directly through email or DM's, let me know what you're trying to specifically you're trying to find and I'll definitely help you. But also to talk to people, right? It's like Jerome brought up, right? Not all conferences are created equal, right? And I agree with Jerome. Not all conferences are created equal. And so if I would ask people, use that to engage with others, do some research. But for the most part, Scott definitely Twitter has been huge for me. And then I would also just Google, right? Like I actually didn't know about any staffing conferences like Google a few when I found some, right?

So cool. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it. Hopefully that helps. For those of you who are attending render this week, hopefully I see you again, stage three. And I'm MC and I'm getting down there tonight. Y'all have a great one. I appreciate you, Aton. If this session resonated with you, please share. And listen, as always, I'm in the staffing and consulting space. If your company needs help, whether from a man's services or or conference side of things, or I'm sorry, whether your company needs, staff, subcontracting or consulting services, please let me know. We do everything from the County Finance Tech Ops marketing. You name it, please let me know.

But again, thank you so much. Can't wait to see everybody down in Atlanta here in a few days. Love y'all meeting. 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 finished 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-Dasten on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.