Are you a Web Developer and you can’t find a job, or you’re thinking to change? Well, maybe this blog post can help you!
If you don’t know me here’s a little recap of my life during the past few years.
I’m Alessandro, or Alex, I’m an Italian web developer currently living in Vancouver, Canada. Before moving to Canada my life pretty much sucked. It was boring, without future nor expectations, an infinite loop of crap and bad situations. I decided to move to Canada to try to improve my life and make new experiences.
The first general reaction from friends and family was “But do you already have a job or at least some interviews?”, and everyone used to freak out at my NO as the answer. I didn’t have a job when I moved to Canada, I didn’t have job interviews and I didn’t know anything about the Canadian work environment, but I was confident and I knew what to do.
Long story short, now I’m living my second year in Vancouver, I changed 2 jobs, my first job interview was 16 hours after my flight landed, I got hired after 4 days I was here and I wasn’t even searching for another job when a company contacted me thru the Contact form of my About page.
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I’m a good developer, not a genius, but I consider myself slightly above average and my english sucks balls, so…how do I succeeded with this crazy adventure? My Blog did Everything for Me! How do I know that? During both job interviews my blog was loaded on their screen and they where legitimately interested in my posts and source codes.
Of course I was also very lucky, right time at the right place, and I don’t think it exists a sort of magic formula that works for everyone, but I decided to analyze my situation and I ended up with a list of 5 points that I think I did right. So, there you go:
Use your face and, in the name of  the almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster, stop using “PussySmasher85” as your nickname or email address.
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This sounds like a stupid advice, but it’s actually pretty rare to find someone that uses an actual picture or a real name on their blog, social media, or email address. I simply thought “If someone wants to hire me, probably will do a research about me, so better be prepared”. Remove the picture of your cat, your flexed abs or that sweet and sexy Lego X-Wing, and put your face on the web. Use your real name, or at least a serious nickname, easy to remember, that sounds like your real name. I chose Alecaddd, Alessandro Castellani Designer Developer Dreamer. It could sound silly, but it’s easy to remember, it carries the first 3 letters of my name and it’s unique. Jackpot!
Unify your social media accounts and clean the garbage.
If you’re like me and you like to buzz around Facebook, Google plus, Twitter, Instagram and other Social network, I strongly suggest you to unify those accounts, use the same nickname, or at least something similar, and clean your garbage. If your Twitter account is public, you shouldn’t complain about your current boss on it, or make fun of a coworker or anything else work related. Remember, you get a job interview if the employer already decided that you’re a good candidate, and if your Social Media Reputation sucks, for him, you suck, and you don’t deserve a chance.
Open a blog, write interesting blog posts and keep it alive.
If you already have a Blog, it shouldn’t be a black hole with the last post published in 2000 to celebrated the defeat of the Millennium Bug. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t need to write something new every week, my blog gets and update once every 2 months, average, sometimes even less, but that doesn’t matter, what matters is the content and an update once in a while. Write about something you like but more important, something work related. If you wanna be a Web Developer, at least one every 3 blog posts should be about web. Show them that you know your shit and you’re always updated on the last trends.
Create Tutorials and share some Source Code
Help the community, show your future Employer that you care about other people, that you’re willing to share your knowledge and you’re not afraid of publishing your code. You will appear confident about your skills and your user base will increase. You can have the most interesting articles in the world, but if you have zero comments on every post, there’s something wrong and your Employer won’t be impressed.
Answer every comment and build your audience
Please, dude, show me that you’re alive and not a bot writing articles. If a user asks for you help, you answer and you be sure to be damn good with your answer. We know how it’s hard to gain audience and convince a user to leave a comment on our blog, so if someone did it, don’t lose it because you were to lazy to answer. Keep your comment section active, create interaction, always say Thank You and build your audience. Active Blog = Active Developer = Good Employee!
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Fuck Yeah! by @jlwoodwork
Well, I think that’s everything for today and I hope these super simple suggestions will help someone out there.
And what about you? Do you have a personal experience to share related to your work and internet presence? Do you have other suggestions? I would love to hear your opinion.
Good luck!