guidance counselor 2.0 · episode 440
solo show
key takeaways
- post about what you learn from live streams, meetups, or conversations and tag the people involved.
- liking and commenting on others' posts is the modern equivalent of networking at in-person events.
- keep linkedin posts short, three to five sentences, since most people don't read long form content.
- at meetups, aim for brief 90 to 120 second conversations, connect on linkedin immediately, then follow up.
- follow up consistently via email and dm; persistence with multiple touchpoints matters more than a single attempt.
listen or watch
listen
about this episode
how to build your online presence through posting, engaging, and networking on social media to advance your job search and career.
full transcript
auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.
So I'm wondering what I'm diving again live show just myself. I'm here to answer any questions that you're dealing with in a job search or any questions in general. But I do want to give kind of a quick high level of what's going on with Torque community. A lot of good stuff going on. If you're not a part of the Discord, please get a part of the chat in the Discord. I will also see this if you have not joined the platform. I would highly recommend George is joining the platform. This is Torque.dev. We actually just uploaded a piece of content. I'm very, very excited about.
And the reason I'm excited about is because we're putting some structure on how you build your profile in our platform. So go check that out. We uploaded that content should be in there. You really should treat the Torque.dev profile site as your LinkedIn, right? Get very specific. We really want you to build a very good profile. We are actually doing a complete redesign, rebrand that should be dropping at the end of March. Which I'm super excited about it. The design is incredible. We're putting a lot of great thought around actually your profile page. There's going to be a lot of cool things around like we're going to have different ways to feature articles.
So we're rolling out ambassador program, which I'm really, really excited about. So I go recommend signing up. But we're going to have a bunch of ways to feature your content if you're an ambassador. Also our profiles have some really cool stuff around like how to level up. So let's say you upload your profile. And you're looking for jobs. It's going to give you recommendations on what type of jobs we have on the platform and how to level up your skills. It's going to be really, really intuitive for recruiters to hit you up at Ronstadt and at Torque. So again, it's really a career profile hub.
We're basically creating a new LinkedIn, which I'm really excited about. I've seen a lot of posts recently just about just how people hate LinkedIn. There's a lot of problems with Twitter. There's a lot of problems with LinkedIn. And I've seen a lot of folks post about just wanting a new platform. And I really think what we're going to do at Torque, probably over the next six months to a year, maybe two years down the road, is we're going to really create this new LinkedIn format where you can, it's less social. There will be some social components on it. But it's going to be more about networking and about being able to connect with other people on the Torque platform, which is Torque.dev.
So please go sign up. Please go create your profile if you have not already. I will drop my specific sign up link in the chat after the live. But again, if you have not done that, please do that. We are throwing, if you're in the Raleigh Durham area, we are throwing a meetup on Sunday at 21 C in Durham. Really excited about this. We are releasing our merch slash swag for the very first time. It's going to be out in a while to be honest with you. It has been a labor of love working on getting designs done, reiterating on designs, getting, we're going to, after this next week, we are going to have a way for you to purchase some of our swag on a storefront.
So we're going to get that set up. Obviously, we're going to do some limited drops to in the discord. So if you are like, so there's going to be some stuff that you can only get if you're if you're only in the discord. So highly recommend you join in the discord as well. Again, go to torque.com to join the discord. Really excited about that. We got some swag coming up. Also, I texted my dear friend, Kelly Vaughn. Kelly Vaughn is coming on the late. So we do a by by monthly, by weekly, by monthly series. So every other week called the laid off lounge where we just talks specifically about job search stuff.
And so I'm going to start inviting my friends into that session. Usually Jason and I run it. Jason and I will always continue to run it. But we have my dear friend, Kelly Vaughn tomorrow. It is at what time is it at? It is at 11 a.m. central. It's going to be 30 minutes. So Kelly Vaughn is going to jump in. So if you are not in the discord, please join the discord, torque.community. And come hang out with me and Kelly Vaughn tomorrow for laid off lounge. It's going to be a great, great time. What else are we doing? Jason who's in the chat right now, he is going.
He's in New York for a Vercel Meetup. So we're going to do a little tour of Vercel collab in New York City tomorrow. I believe that meetup is Jason. You can correct it. Also to I do see Roxy chime in here. Yes. So we have a limited run severance like a torque all things open collab shirt. I got the approval from Todd who runs all things open. It is going to be severance themed. If you have not seen me posted, it's really cool. Go back through my posts. Very excited about that. I think it's really cool. It's always nice when you're friends who aren't even really in tech.
They do. You got to get me one of those shirts. So really excited. We're going to do more cool fun swag like this. We're doing a lot of apparel right now. But we're going to kind of get into some a lot of fun other branded type of merch slash swag. So really, we're excited. Jason goes to meetup for Vercels tonight, whatever. So yeah, go if you're in New York, hit up my guy Jason. We'd love to see you out there at the Vercel Meetup. But yeah, so the swag is going to be great. What else we got going on? We got, you know, again, we really try.
to build a community where you can get plugged in at. Well, we just lost a directory, which is great. So go to our Torque.community page. We have created directory. One of the reasons why I wanted a directory is that I cannot be in the Discord as much as I want to just because I'm in meetings all day. And I can't really be a part of the chat. But I really want to network with people. And so I'll probably take once a month be able to send out messages and be able to connect with you all on LinkedIn. This maybe sends you an email. So please go go go out the directory.
It's going to be a great way to again continue to build connections because there are some people in our Discord or community who aren't on the Discord that are really, really great engineers. So I want to get people connected. So please go sign up on our Torque directory page. It's going to be great. Yes, also shout out to Roxy for winning. This is another reason why we want you a part of the community. We're going to do it a lot more giveaways. Listen, we speak, I speak of conferences. You know, Jason goes to conferences, meetups. So if you want to be kept up in a loop of everything we're doing, get a part of the Discord, join up on our platform.
We send out weekly email newsletters, feel free to join my text community again. What we're trying to do is just trying to develop this ecosystem where you can get involved. And so like I said, we did give out a free ticket to Roxy. She was able to get 25 people signed up to the Torque platform. Also another thing too, everybody who signed up to Torque platform, you actually have a referral code in your profile. If you go to your Torque.dev profile, scroll all the way down. There is, do you have your own link? So feel free to share that with others. Maybe embed that on your like, you know, link tree, your link in bio type situation for people to sign up because we're going to be giving away a lot of cool swag, a lot of our limited run stuff.
We're going to really only have four people who get people joined on the platform. So we'd love to have you guys person, we're pushing referral code. And we will definitely have some really cool swag as well. But yeah, I mean, listen, like Jason jokes here, everything, everywhere all at once. I mean, listen, we can get into a whole thing around community. But this is one of the things about building community. We kind of have to be everywhere all the time all at once. And Jason does a great job at our entire community. He does a great job of it. He managed doing a great job of it in Mexico.
And then we are slowly getting more things going in South America as well. So it's really exciting time to be a part of the Torque community. I think what we're doing is really special. And so I appreciate y'all tuning in and just being engaged. Yeah, yeah, Danny. Yeah, I wonder what that link was for. Yeah, it's just for join people for people to really be a part of the platform. So if you want to share that and be able to win prizes, again, like we're going to hook people up with some swag. And to be quite frank with you, this is like the first day where I like I haven't worn something of our swag.
I really like it. I developed T-shirts that I would want to wear every day. And so literally I was with my with with the fam Monday afternoon up in Bowling Green. I was wearing my one of my torture torque shirts. So yeah, all right. So I want to get into some job search stuff here. Kind of that that are some questions in our discord. One of the things that came in is like is really like how to engage with people. Right. There was a comment in here. I'm scrolling like online. So it says how does everyone keep an active enough online presence on LinkedIn, Blue Sky and Twitter?
I believe just liking is not enough. And you should be a bit engaging too, like a thoughtful comment on post. So here's the first off, if you really want to try to get into cross platform for most posting, especially on Twitter and Blue Sky, I would highly recommend using a tool buffer. So this gets into kind of some social kind of some social media stuff here. But buffer is actually a free tool for so many posts. But if you really want to start, I would recommend, you know, using Blue Sky and Twitter just because those are kind of similar short form kind of written content.
So use buffer. But like when it comes to, you know, everybody keeping an active online presence, I think it's like really showing up in the chat like this. Right. It's saying hey, it's engaging with people. I also think literally comedy on people's posts is a huge way. What I've also realized too is I've kind of gotten a little, bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a big fan of Alex Friedman. She's been on the pod once before. She's in Austin. She's got a great following. And basically, when she posts, I always try to engage whether it's a LOL or a retweeter or a repost because what that does is you have to understand something.
How networking has fundamentally changed. No working has fundamentally changed from going to meetups and like the handshaking to now liking and commenting on people's posts. Right. We live on our cell phones because meetups have gone to a wayside. I'm not going to get into that. I see Clark sell in the comments here. Clark is good to see you. That's a whole other conversation around the importance of in person meetups. Well, I'm not going to talk about that today. I've had a lot of live shows recently about it. But for me, I think we got a view networking as literally the liking and commenting and posting.
Right. So here's kind of how I break down. If you go to a meetup or go to a conference, here's how that translates to social media. You posting every day on LinkedIn is the equivalent of you showing up to a meetup. Now, be thoughtful when in terms of posting. Right. A lot of people like I don't know what to post. I don't know how to post. Posting literally is just documenting what you're learning. Prime example. What I would do a very simple tool, a very simple tool for you all is any torque stream. Whether it's my stream and sorry, I'm dealing with more allergies or cold again.
So sorry if I keep clearing my throat and sniffling. But like if you attend a tech commute by Jason Torres or you attend a blank spaces by he meta or you attend a IRL URL by Brianna. I would literally talk about what you learned in that show. Right. Same thing here. I would literally make a post on what you learned from this live stream today and tag people. Right. That is literally one of the things that I would focus on is like if you're talking about creating content is just what you're learning. Prime example. My post today on LinkedIn was kind of a summary of my live show yesterday was Shonday.
And also another random Twitter post I saw. So I talked about the fact of cold emailing and following up with people. Right. At a great conversation yesterday with Anne Griffin. Anne Griffin is a prolific product manager out of DC. She's specifically really good in the AI space. We had a great conversation. I already have a post that's ready to go for tomorrow based off my conversation with Anne. Right. So one of the things that I would do is I would just have chats with people and then just document what you've learned and tag those people. Right. So that's the equivalent of showing up to a conference.
That's equivalent of showing up to a meet up actually posting. Then the liking and commenting is the equivalent of you shaking hands and introducing yourself. Again, I'm trying to make kind of make I'm trying to do an analogy here. So if I go up to Jason at a meet up and I shake my hand, I shake Jason's hand is nice to meet you. That's the equivalent of liking and commenting on somebody's post. Right. And then the follow up is obviously the message in the DM. Does that make sense to everybody? I really think that's how you need to break this down. How you think about it.
So when you show up to a conference or show up to a meet up, that's equivalent of posting online, making a post. Then the hand to hand combat, the shaking of the hands to introduce yourself is the liking and commenting. And then the follow up in the DM's is like the follow up for the conference. Right. So that's again, whether you like it or not, I get a lot of DM's saying like, oh, well, it's just this is dumb. This is just part of the game. This is like whatever it is. There is a game now. You have to play the game to be successful.
Right. So I want to stop there and I want to go to the comments. Here we go. Right here. I went to one of my first tech meetups. The other day I'm awkward. I'm not trying to start conversations in person. Any advice. I love this. All right. So Jordan, to be totally frank with you, I'm terrible at this as well. I think the thing that you need to tell yourself is at the end of the day, people actually don't want to talk a lot. And people are nervous like you. So what I do is, I mean, listen, y'all, I'm super, I'm super weird. When I went to Amsterdam and I went to the AI meetup, like the day I got off the plane.
First off, I was incredibly tired jet lag. But like I was very nervous. I didn't know a lot of people. What I would do, what I did is I went up to somebody and I said, hey, my name is Taylor. What do you do? Like what do you focus on? What do you do? Right. Then they tell you, hey, Jordan, my name is Taylor. I lead community at Torque. Great. And then ask some follow question. What do you love about your job? Right. And then tell, tell the word about yourself. Right? Well, you know, my name is Jordan. You know, I'm a junior developer. You know, I'm looking to learn more about X.
Right. The, the, I would say the point of the conversation is just to get on somebody's radar. So it doesn't have to be super long. Right. I would literally, I prefer somebody just to come up to me for about 90 to 120 seconds. So a minute and a half, two minutes. Tell me about yourself. What do you do? And just say, you know, it was great chatting. Let's stay in touch and then move on. Right. Again, I think, I think you need, I think people need to take stress off themselves because they think they have to talk to a person for like 30 minutes. You don't.
Right. The whole point of networking is just to get on somebody's radar. But what I would do every single time I would, I would meet with somebody, connect with them on LinkedIn and then follow up with them after they meet up. Here's the deal. Most people in a meetup setting are, are, are not really going to want to, are not really going to want to like, you know, really, they, they, I'm trying to figure out the words to say here. I think people freeze and I think people have a heart. And I'm engaging in person. So make it as easy for them as possible. Give them layup questions.
What do you do? What do you specialize in? What do you love to do? What do you hear for? What are you looking for? And then move on. Right. But make sure you connect with them on LinkedIn. I think, I think if there's anything like, you know, one of the, one of the things I regret with the, with the meetup I went to in Amsterdam is I didn't connect with enough people on LinkedIn. Right. So pull up your LinkedIn when you meet somebody immediately, get them in your ecosystem and follow up at the map towards. Join hopefully that helps. Let's see here. This is Surya Touta.
I'm going to hear calling all dads. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're a dad and tech, we have our meetup here in an hour. So we'd love to see you there. Um, let's see here Jordan. I'm sorry. I'm going to all the comments here. Yeah, Bao comes in here. Yeah. I mean, listen, shut up. Dev. I remember who, who Dev is. Dev started this back in his, back in the day. He would summarize what my podcast would be and then tag people. And so again, I think this is a great like literally. And I think this is what we're going to look for in ambassador. Like even just summarizing our chats, I think is huge.
Right. One of the reasons why I do these live shows is to allow people to connect, but also listen, if you learn something post about it, just post about it and tag me. The way LinkedIn works is if you tag me, most of my followers are going to see you. And I got like 27,000 followers now at this point. Right. That's just the power of networking. Let's see here. Morning. I was going to see you always tag speakers. Yeah. I mean, I think like I think one of the most underrated parts of going to a meetup and here in a speaker or a conference that people don't do is create content for the speaker.
So so if you go to a meetup or go to a conference or again, go to any of the torque live streams and you learn something, tag who was on the tag who was on the episode. Right. Tag who was on the episode connect with that person. Right. I mean, listen, you're at the end of the day. I've been doing this live stream now five years this year. Five years this year. If you have stayed consistent with me and you've been on the journey with me for five years, your network would be just as good as mine. And I feel like I have probably one of the most powerful networks out there when it comes to software engineering.
So again, connect with people, tag people. It's just huge. Right. That's one thing I haven't done to implementation of reposting content what I've learned. Yeah. Again, all you got to do creative posts, it doesn't have to be long. Most of y'all overcomplicate LinkedIn posts, people have zero attention spans. So keep it short. Three five sentences. A lot of people think LinkedIn. Now, if you want to use LinkedIn for like a really long form blog style content, you can. But I will tell you this. Most people don't read it. I just don't. Right. Three to five sentences. It does not have to be so long corners tailored.
Don't know three minutes is too long. We're actually too long. Let's see here. Yeah, there's no follow through. Follow through is absolutely massive. Also like another somebody else, Jordan. Jordan from our Jordan Wallace from our Ron Stad team. Go connect with her. She she is starting a podcast. Yeah, Jordan Wallace. She's creating a podcast. Go connect with her. Right. And start connecting with her people. Right. Again, incredibly important. Let's see here. Angela's comes in here. My advice. Hey, Angela's. You may not start profile. Hey, look at that. Such a good thing. My advice as someone who is a major extrovert, don't try to impress anybody.
Don't go into the conversation or worry about what people are going to think of you. Be funny. Be self deprecating. Yeah. I mean, I'm a big self deprecating fan. Don't overstay your welcome. Have a casual chat. Get there and focus it in. Yeah. I mean, listen, it really is this simple. It really is this simple. I just feel like people try to really put pressure on themselves. Have this really long conversation. And you just don't need to. Tagging folks works and absolutely does. Let's see. What else? Yeah. Don't. It's good to see you buddy. Ryan, it's good to see you. Let's see here. I'm definitely guilty of writing medium.
Yeah. Listen, listen, if you love writing and you I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying it. I think if you're starting on your journey, the shorter the content is better because people engage with that. I'll turn it. Yeah. That would be absolutely good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, is putting together fantastic. Yeah. I absolutely would follow Jordan is going to be creating good content. All right. Let me let me go to the next kind of session. Let me go to the next thing. Let me know. If there's any more questions that you have this year, the outcomes in here on our and all these questions are from our Torque Discord.
Yeah. I've realized people scrolling on LinkedIn are not looking for technical explanations, technology deep dives or JavaScript tips and tricks. Less technical insights work better on LinkedIn. I do agree with that. I think this is a conversation I've been having with my team internally. Like I think there's enough technical content out there. And I think a lot of junior devs, junior to mid level devs are like, well, I don't have the skills. They like to be able to post technical stuff. And that's okay. Just post about your job search, post about networking. I want to give a shout to my guy, Noah Allen. Do please follow Noah Allen on LinkedIn.
He has a great series where he creates a really good video of documenting his job search. I think he's on day 35 right now. And it's like super short. To the point. So highly recommend following. But again, like he's a junior dev, he's not out here talking about what he's learning in JavaScript. He's talking about the people he's meeting in the conversations he's having, which is incredibly important. I'm starting to think if an idea is long enough. Yeah. I love this. Yeah. So if you I would highly recommend if you have not caught my live stream with Sean on day yesterday, I would highly recommend doing this.
Joel, it's good to see you. Joel is on my TikTok right now. Fantastic recruiters are Joe. Good to see you buddy. But yeah, I think video is huge. I think I saw a post on Twitter. I think it was Twitter where it was like making videos. Yes, I know who it was. Making video content. Is it necessarily for people to see it's to make you a better communicator. Right. Let me say that again. Video content isn't necessarily for for other people to view it, which it will get views. But it's for you to become a better communicator. I've become a better communicator because I have been doing this thing for five years now.
And so again, I think making video content carries a ton of weight. I would say right now people don't really care what it sounds like or looks like. I think people just want to see stuff. Right. I mean, you got to understand something like content people just want to watch stuff. Like it's that simple. So again, continue continue to put things out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we are a technical company. In that sense, we're facilitating technical content 100% 100% to provide value 100%. We need a torque shirt of Jason and Taylor. No, we ain't we ain't got that much shirt. My we we ain't got that much type of shirt real estate.
Richard, that's my thought when it comes to posting technical content, Phil and not having technical skills, which is why I've been slowly becoming more chronic posting long forms. Yeah, but Richard, I want to give you your flowers to man. Like all you do is take a picture of who you're talking to and post about and talk about conversation. I think it's great. I think it's great. I don't think everybody needs a podcast, but I think everybody should be documenting the conversations around 100%. 100%. Um, let's see here. Uh, what else? Want to go back to the discord as we kind of wrap up here. Again, please, that's any questions.
If you have them, it looks like those are the main ones right now. Again, I made a post today. Um, we love y'all want to engage with it. It's around like follow up and cold emails. Like again, I saw this post on Twitter. And it's kind of validings is everything I've been saying, but this one guy, he's a pretty famous guy from a podcast perspective. He was like, everybody is one emailing 20 follow ups away from getting to the connection you want to get to. Right. And so again, I think follow up. Be fearless. Highly recommend listening to the Sean days live stream yesterday. We talked about how to send a really good DM.
Um, so, so check that out as well. Um, let's see here. Uh, Ellie comes in here. Uh, yeah, it's tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Um, uh, tomorrow at 11 a.m. central in the discord. Me and Kelly bond are going to be talking about the job search stuff. Um, yeah, not everyone needs to post video content 100%. I just think video content really cuts through the noise of written content right now. Right. And, and, and, and I think I think if you feel comfortable with it, um, I think, uh, I think you will be very successful. All right. So we're at time. I'm going to leave some breakfast and get ready for my dad's and technique.
I appreciate y'all hanging out this morning. Hopefully you got something from it. If you did get something from it, post about it. Tag me. I like it. I'll comment, right. It's how this whole thing works. Um, so again, y'all have a great one. Thank you again for tuning in this morning for guidance counselor 2.0. So show the love of seeing a tort discord. Again, torque dot community, um, is where it's at. Um, and then if you want text updates, shoot me a text. Otherwise, I appreciate y'all. Let's talk about how much cold brew is a healthy amount. Now let's not. Um, y'all have a great one.
I appreciate y'all so so much. Oh, finally. One more thing I want to say. Just want to thank you to the community. Um, I got a little in my fields last night. Um, I've had so many people reach out to me that every time they come on one of my live streams, the engagement. The amount of people that connect with them is huge. I want to go back to Alex Friedman. Alex Friedman. She came on my show last year. She has been on a lot. A lot of shows. Um, uh, in a lot of podcasts. And she says your community. I got more connections for your community than any other podcasts.
I've been a part of. So that is that is huge. Thank you to all. I really, really appreciate it. Y'all have a great one. Go be great. Go be fearless. Go ask. Go go go go DM somebody you've always wanted to talk to and start a conversation. We'll see you all soon. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause 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 at T-Dasting on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.