navigating your career and job search w/ leon noel

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I know people, I know a lot of people know who you are. But talk about what you've built with 100 devs, resilient coders, and then I'll dive in kind of pepper and use some questions. Yeah, sure. So resilient coders were based out of Boston and Philly. We train exceptional black and brown talent to be software engineers. We've helped hundreds of folks go from kind of minimum wage, no degree, into high-growth, high-growth careers, to software engineers. With 100 devs, I had been running programs like resilient coders that were smaller, more selective, pandemic hit. I wanted to be helpful. I'm not a doctor. Could it look, what could I do, right?

And so I decided to launch a program that would help folks learn how to code. And we started off with just a handful of folks, I thought it'd be me and three people online, but I decided to put it on Twitch. We did a pilot version of it that went really well. We have like 300 plus people that would join every single class. And then for our second cohort, it kind of really exploded. We'd have thousands of people that would join for each class. And that's morphed into hundreds and hundreds. If not, there's 0.000 of people that have gotten jobs as software engineers for 70,000 plus strong and discord.

Our most recent class also sponsored by AppRite, Shadow of AppRite. We had about 2000 concurrent live folks in that class, but 80,000 unique viewers. So we just try to make a place for folks that are learning that want to learn how to code, that want to learn how to get a job, we're more a jobs program than we are coding program. A space where they can learn, be comfortable and grow. Yeah, I love that. And there's been a lot of intersection two with hundred devs in Torque, which has been awesome, which I'm super pumped about. So all right, man, I know, so I know you have a great podcast with Danny.

I know we all kind of talk about the same stuff, but I definitely obviously, you know, again, want to talk to you about what's going on. What are you seeing in the market? What do you think people are struggling? And yeah, let's just go ahead and start there. What do you think people really miss in the mark right now? Yeah, I think one, it's the belief right now. I think the biggest thing I see holding folks back is the negativity right now. of course we know the market is the market, right? But people are using that as a mechanism to stop taking action. And so, and I just see that at scale and it's unfortunate.

And I understand why because you find yourself in this bubble, you're not in the Torque community, you're not in the hundred devs community. You don't have that positivity coming in that shows you if you put in the effort, you will get the result out. And so when you don't see effort, equal and result, you get burnout. And so I understand a lot of people are burnt out. So the first biggest mistake you're making is being in a negativity chamber. You have to be around other people that are job searching that are on the hunt that are making wins that are getting interviews that are getting opportunities that are getting jobs.

We've been live pretty much every day of the week for the past month or so on our discord. We have about four to 600 people that join us every single day live to just go on the job search together. And every single day we've had people get interviews and we've had every single day people get jobs. Sometimes five plus people getting jobs, sometimes five plus people getting interviews, every single day. So when you put yourself in that kind of environment, you start to go, hmm, maybe I can do it to maybe it is an all doom and gloom and then you take more action. So that's the first thing I think people need to change.

The second thing and then I'm sure we can kind of riff off of it. Yeah. Yeah. The second thing that is that this idea of you kind of don't know that you smell. And so I always talk about it as a smell. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We all have a smell that we have to figure out. It's something I've never heard this is great. It's something small that when a recruiter, someone that's hiring is looking at your application that they see that makes to go, hmm, maybe I should look at another candidate. It's really hard once you've been in it for a while to see what's causing that that reaction.

And so I really like for folks to get an outside perspective for somebody else to look at the resume, look at the LinkedIn to look at the, on the Deodorant, to look at these things that are the first line of what people are seeing. And then make sure that there's nothing off. I did like 21 of ones last week. People didn't have right titles. They weren't talking about themselves in the highest. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, when I spoke last week in Amsterdam, the thing I say the most is people who are getting jobs aren't necessarily better than you. They're doing the small stuff better than exactly.

Exactly. The small stuff compounds. Every little thing opens a door. And the more doors you can open, the more opportunity can come your way. And you have to sweat the details. You have to think it needs to be good. Your resume needs to be good. Every part of that online presence, whatever that first line of defense is, you need somebody in under six seconds to go, this person is a soft engineer. And I won't get in trouble if I put them in front of the nerds. Right? I, I, I, as the person as the first line of defense won't, won't have my job impacted by putting you in that room.

And so if you don't dispel that kind of fear in that first glance, you're not making it to the next round. Yeah, 100%. I actually scheduled a tweet for today. It said, if we're being honest, most people only read the top third of your resume. Correct. Yeah. And so that, that top third has got to be dialed. And, and the funny thing is too, you can do this. Like you don't need to like, it's not some like secret magic arts. I mean, there are things like people reading in an F-shaped pattern. You should be able to like reinforce the things that you want folks to learn.

But just give your resume to your mama, give her six seconds and then tell her, what you know, dude, I talk about, I actually put a lot of this on the marketing side and kind of a brain and content. Like if my 70 year old mother doesn't understand what I'm saying or what I'm writing, yeah, it, then it's wrong. Yeah. And it's funny because you'll, you'll have people do the exercise and they're like, I know your phone number because they, they put their name and then their email, their phone number, their address, everything. And if that blog and people are reading that down. And so that it's like, oh, so you actually didn't know anything about me or they make it to the summary statement if you have one.

And that it's like, I work on agile teams. Great. I know nothing about you. Right. Yeah. And it may be, maybe they get past the summary statement and then it's like, it says some company they've never heard of, some title that makes no sense to them. And then they see that same thing. So if you don't quantify like the size of the company, what they're doing, anything like that, like they are. There's no way for us to figure out who you are or what you're about. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. One of the things I talk a lot about is when I help with resumes, it's real.

So people want to hire very specific people for very specific needs from very specific industries. Like right now it's very specific. So like if you do not work for essentially a big tech company, you need to put who you are or who the company is revenue size, what they do. Because if I'm hiring for an e-com company and you essentially have worked all e-com, but you work for a bunch of small companies I don't know about, I'm not going to call you because I don't know what, you know, the small company. I know. Yeah, exactly. You know, again, and you have to remember to typically the first people looking at your resume are not technical, they're dumb recruiters.

Yeah. And they're control F in right? That's what I'm saying. 70 year old mother, right? If your mom or your grandma or your non technical sister or brother cannot understand what you do, typically a recruiter doesn't know what you do either and then you exactly call it. You know, I want to go back to what you were saying. And I think it's so important in my, my life yesterday, we kind of touched on this too about just the power of getting into these communities, right? Theo put out a video. I watched a few like a month or two ago around just like the people that are in his community that he does are getting jobs.

Yeah. And it's not necessarily because of him, but it's they're in the community. And so can you talk about why everybody should be in a discord, be in a slack, be in something right now. I know you already mentioned it, but can we kind of go maybe another. Yeah. So, you know, we've got to figure out why you smell right? And so having others around you that could tell you what's wrong, what you can fix is great. The positivity aspect is really important, right? You need to be able to see people winning. You need to be able to see people getting to where you want to go.

And you need real boots on the ground. Information is to what's working. That's this changes too quickly. The things that people are focusing on changes too quickly. And if you're just relying on your experience, you only get so many swings at the bat, right? You only get so many times to interview only so many times to the shoot your shot. But what if you could learn from a hundred other plus people that are all shooting their shot at the same time? How much faster would you grow to hear their experience to hear the things that work for them, didn't work for them to be able to then send them a message and say, Hey, what about my resume is different than your resume.

If that worked for you, like there's just so many things that you get out of a community that you just wouldn't get if you're by yourself. You don't get the encouragement. You don't get the compounding of experience. And you just feel isolated. And so this is not an easy career for a lot of folks in terms of if you're talking about soft engineering, it's it ebbs and flows. Lay off the part of the game. You need a group of people that could help you ride out the roller coaster to reinforce the things that you're doing and to bring you that little bit of belief. And so that's kind of what I see the big things out of a community.

And then the smaller things are just community is how it all works long term too, right? The folks in your community with now are your peers. You are all going to go out into the world. You're all going to get hired and eventually those teams are going to need to hire other engineers. Everyone's asking themselves the three big questions now. Who do I know? Who can I who do my friends know? And if not, how can I approach internally when I'm hiring? And so you are just missing a whole level of opportunities and jobs. If you don't have a community of folks and network of individuals that understand the shared experiences that you've gone through that understand your talent and can make referrals for you.

And so my biggest thing when it comes to jobs is networking. I've been saying this for 10 plus years. I think the open is the most stores. I hope things that look get you the most opportunity. But networking is also with your peers. And then as you grow, you all grow together. And then that becomes such a rock solid network. There's so many people in this chat that I know are good friends that came together in communities. And when they all make it to the promised land and they need to hire more guests where they're going first. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Let me, Justin comes in here.

The laid off slack for the company that has 70 of us has been huge for morale as well. And tips and tricks great for what's working and what's not today's market support. This is a huge 100%. Let me, I want to talk about what, so what I was taught as a recruiter growing up. What I was taught as a recruiter growing up is you should go to one in person meet up a month. One thing that I did when I was in the Raleigh market for a year is I went every week. Because I was single. And I think because the shift has occurred from, let's face it, a lot of local meetups have gone by the wayside because of COVID.

There are a lot more virtual communities. In my opinion, if you are not showing up to a thing like this once a week, I think you're far and behind. People are showing up 100 devs and droves and being a part of stuff. And I think, again, there's so many people, there's so many names on the chat right now that like, if a job were to pop up and somebody were to hit me up, I would literally source from the community. That's just how it works. That's the same thing too with companies too. Listen, they don't want to go through 700 job postings or 700 applicants.

Kelly Bontex is me all the time when she posts her role and she's like, I literally have 700 engineers for a senior spot, one senior spot. And Kelly is one of the good ones. They're probably going to look at all of them. Right. I talk to. They're not. It's too overwhelming. And half of them are AI, half of its bots. It's too muddy right now. The water is very muddy. There's too much going on that it's overwhelming for anybody that's strapped to get this many, this much talent. They're doing something different nowadays and they're going and they're sourcing from the folks that they know. And so I think that that going to a meetup advice is strong at resilient coders every single week.

They have to get five connections and then they have to get three coffee chats. They go off and on and every single week they have to go to two in person events. Two in person. Right. And so that's the minimum. Yeah. Yeah. And 100 deaths. We have similar requirements to where it's like you have to get out there. You have to build the relationships. And when I want people to understand is yes, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. But the upside is so huge that it is immensely worth it. And I think a lot of people don't realize how the game is being played these days.

And they get frustrated when there are 100,000th application gets ghosted for the 100,000 time. It's just not how you play the game right now. We have a saying 100 deaths that we never click apply. We're not clickers. My advice is a little bit different because opportunities close so quickly that you do have to click just to get in the running. But it's not how you get the opportunity. You have to network your way in. And if you find yourself not actively building out a list of companies that are actively hiring, buying the people at those companies, building real relationships, growing your network outside and you're fundamentally doing the wrong thing if you want to get a job.

You brought up networking a few times now. I know we've talked a little bit about what to do. I think people are scared to reach out. I don't know what to say. I don't have anything to offer. Talk about how you should be positioning yourself in the DMs to peers, but also hiring managers who may not even know you. Yeah. You don't have to start off super strong. We can break down like in person and virtual. So in person is easier because in person we show up. I see you getting a slice of coffee. I mean, slice of pizza or something. Yeah. Yeah. Slice of coffee.

Nice coffee. And I see you. We make eye contact and I can do this. Right. That's it. And then next next month, the same interaction happens. You do that a third time we're acquainted. You're going on. Yeah. We're good. We know each other. I could add you on LinkedIn. Like we could have not set a word that familiarity seeing each other in real physical spaces is the first step to connection. And that's what you have to do. Just be present. If you're present, people start to recognize you. And that's enough to kind of get the ball rolling. If you have some sort of social anxiety or things around talking to others, there are things you can do to the hopefully work on those things.

On our Discord 100 devs, we have a social anxiety meetup group where folks. Can kind of practice talking and engaging. So that's something I would recommend. But also bring a buddy, bring somebody that you already know. Yeah. It doesn't have to be technical. Yeah. Just that you feel like safe and you can approach people as a pair and get used to talking and communicating. But the whole thing is that it's not networking. It's just making friends. Yep. I talk more about Pokemon than I do about code at meetups. Right. Yeah. It has nothing to do with your technical ability. It has nothing to do with your ability to write the best, the most performing code.

It's just trying to make a friend. Yes. And if you don't know how to make friends, I like a book called How to Win Friends and influence people. It kind of gives you a framework to follow so that you know how to have conversations. You're not stumbling. So you can do these little things. And over time, just take action. Try it. You'll find what feels weird. You'll find what feels right. You'll find your people too. Because not every group is going to be your vibe. And that's okay. You can go to a different one. So that's in person. You build that up over time. For virtual, just engage.

If somebody makes a post on LinkedIn, they want you to do to see it. Yeah. If somebody makes a post on Twitter, they want you to see it. And if you like it, they're going to see that you liked it. Yeah. And you just got to do that a couple of times. So somebody recognizes you as the person that engages with their content. People people. I sound crazy when I say this in my talks that my entire career is transformed in the last four years because I've liked and commented on people. says, there you go. That's it. I went for me recruiter. Mm hmm. Sure.

Like, like, like, like, like, if community put it on a shirt, come on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, community builder, right. But all I did was I started to double triple down on LinkedIn and Twitter and just start engaging with people. Right. And it's huge. Again, you know, I wanted the reasons why we do, I think lives like this for some point reason why I do it is because I want people to connect with people on this and have an excuse and have a reason to connect. Right. So for example, I don't know if, I don't know if Matt knows. Roxy, right.

But Roxy could message Matt and be like, hey, I saw you on guidance counselor two point out today. I would love to chat. There you go. Then there's like an immediate, in there, there's immediate commonality, which I think is which is which is huge when it comes to networking. Let me ask you this when people shoot their shot, right. If they like, you know, let me, you know, let me know. I'm great at you and I met it commit your code, but like, you know, how do you like to be approached? You're a busy man. You can't take everybody's calls, right. I mean, shout out to you for taking all those one on ones.

But how do you like to be approached in the DM's? I think the problem with me is that I go through spurts where I have time and time where I like I literally am scheduling bathroom breaks, right. And so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so for me, some folks will reach out, but they just reached out at the wrong time. So I recognize people that do like follow ups, like, yeah, like they shoot their shot. They don't get the direct response. They shoot their shot again a couple months later and I'll see that and I'm more likely to respond the second time. If for some reason I was busy the first, right.

And so then I'm working on to be able to respond to everyone, but it's just a lot. And so the way I like to be approached is just has nothing to do with code job. If you mentioned an interest or a hobby or something like that, you are way more likely to get a response. And that's what I coach folks on to is like this idea that either trying to provide a little bit of value, be funny, or show that you actually know or care about something that they like. If you can do one of those three things, the likelihood of you getting a response goes through the roof.

Yeah. Absolutely. We usually would I like to do. And literally, I mean, I take my advice. Priming sample. I posted on my Instagram today. I literally, I think the algorithm is getting really good on X. I've started engaged with a lot of D to C founder started liking their stuff. And some founder popped up on my Twitter feed and it was a sleep gummy, a natural sleep gummy founder. So I started to follow him like a stuff like a stuff like a stuff that I still knew as DM's like, Hey, I'm a, you know, we love to try your product. I know a bunch of people.

I know if you have an affiliate code, he set me up, sent me some sample and I love it and now I'm repinant. That's dope. Like everything I say is what I do. And again, I think training being a traditional agency recruiter for 11 years has taught me skills. Everything I teach you all is everything we were taught as a recruiter as a recruiter. We were, we were required to meet three new people a day. That's dope. Yeah. Coffee lot like import like a like a like a meaningful and every, so we met 15 people a week. Times 52. So that's 600 people a year.

And then you do that for 11 years like I did. Hey, it's fair amount of people, right. So again, everything, everything I say, you know, it's the things I've done. We're already seven minutes left. I know you probably gotta go to the bathroom at 10 o'clock central. So I really want to get, is there anything else that you really want to get across right now? Yeah. I think for folks that I know that a lot of folks are in the suck right now. We called the trough of sorrow. And I know that when you're in the trough of sorrow, it's really hard to see the end.

And there's also this like very weird thing about the trough of sorrow is that the very, very, and it gets worse before it gets to the wiggles of false hope and then into the promise land. And so if you are in the trough of sorrow, I understand the feelings, I understand the pain, I understand what you're going through. And I beg you, I beg you to join a community that can help lift you out of the trough. Whether it's torque, whether it's on your desk, whether it's something that's local to you. Make sure you're surrounding yourself around people that can help you through it. And then realize it does get better and that it gets better by you taking action.

Doesn't it even matter what that action is just start getting momentum that eventually you can stumble upon the right thing. Now there are some right things that I think you should be doing. I think you should take a, an approach to which means that you shouldn't be going into your days like an accident. Have a great plan for each day. I know what your goals are for that day. Know what small steps you are taking that will eventually lead you to the job. We tend to hyper focus on the end goal, which is getting the job, but would be way better served if we had things that were in our control each day.

I'm going to engage with 10 people on Twitter. I'm going to engage with 20 people on LinkedIn. And like these things that if you do them enough lead the opportunity, but are fully on your controls so that you don't burn out. So don't go into your days like an accident. Set up real digestible goals that have you winning each day, belong to a community of lift you and supports you through the trough. And then realize that networking is the only thing that matters in my opinion these days right now. It's too hard to cut through the BS. You need those real relationships to have more opportunity.

Yeah, I truly think. And I know I talk all the time, but networking is everything now. It really is. It's so hard. There's so much clutter everywhere with AI right now. There's so much inauthenticity across the board. And I think the more you can get on a one-on-one tactical basis, it's going to be absolutely massive. I want to be able to obviously plug what you're doing. What's the best way to get in 100 devs and resulting covers and all that? Yeah, you can we're on Discord. You can always just search 100 devs on Google. 100 is zero, D, E, V, S 100 devs. We'll pop right up.

Click that link. Join us on Discord. Once you're joined Discord, you're joining a community of 70,000 people. We'll be live today at 5.30pm Eastern Time. And tomorrow, it'll be Friday 5.30pm Eastern Time for folks that are with us live. And then if you're watching this as a recording, we're live pretty much every Tuesday and Friday 5.30am Eastern Time. Hundreds of people that are sharing their real experiences of what it's like on the job search right now. If you're in Boston and Philly, definitely check out resilient coders. And also got to plug the podcast. A little 40 podcast right now. Super pumped programming podcast. I love it.

That's awesome. Well, y'all, thank you again for this. Thank you all again for showing up. Leon, thank you my friends so much. Yeah, I can say I'm talking about you backstage, but y'all have a fantastic one. Love to see you in the Torque Discord. Love to see you then. Obviously in 100 devs Discord. Hey, you did it. You'll listen 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 at T-Dasting on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.