Episode 57: How to Sell Yourself and Find Work

Returning to talk more about selling yourself and finding work in software development is David Gatti. David comes from a varied and global background in tech and more. Now, he’s here to confirm what’s true and what’s false about what you really need to do to get into tech. If you’re ready to hear more about it, listen in to episode 57. Be sure to leave us some comments about what you liked at the end.

Say hello to David on Twitter!

David’s Bio:

David Gatti began his career in IT as a Systems Administrator. He learned how to code in PHP out of boredom, and made some simple internal tools to help him while managing the company network.

He then became a blogger and wrote about mobile technologies before the iPhone came into existence and PDAs had cellular modems. He also wrote the CMS for the website itself when WordPress was first starting. Then he began working as a web developer for a company that did simple Facebook games.

After this initial experience, he imported a Windows Mobile app to Android 2.3. He later became a Brand Manager for a mobile game company and a Marketing Director for another company, and at that company – he transitioned to Developer Relations Manager and worked for two companies with this title. It was a job that he fell in love with.

But, while hunting for his next opportunity, he struggled to find the right company. Out of frustration, he created Simpe.li (simply) so he could keep doing what he does best – Development Relations Management done right.

Episode Highlights and Show Notes:

Arsalan: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Mentoring Developers. My guest again today is David Gatti. David, how are you?

David: I’m good. How are you?

Arsalan: I’m doing fantastic. It was good to have you in the last episode and I’m excited to have you again because we’re going to talk about another really relevant topic. I’m going to let you describe it.

David: Thank you. I don’t have a platform for it, so let’s say this. I want to help you learn how to sell yourself to an employer.

Arsalan: That’s great! How to sell yourself or how to get a job and get ahead if you’re just starting out and are new to software development. If you’re wondering how you’re going to get noticed and how you’re going to get a job, you should be listening to this episode.

David: Correct. The first thing will require lots of work and patience. You are going to need to do a bunch of things before you can start looking for a job if you want to do this quickly and find someone who is going to like you. There are a lot of people online who are bombarding employers and companies trying to convince them that they are the perfect fit for the job. This is without them providing any proof that they are any good at what they do. You may be thinking to yourself that you just finished school and you don’t have any experience. Yet, in 2017 you don’t need any experience. You need to build your portfolio online. You can do this a couple of ways.

David: Start a topic that you’re passionate about and learn everything that there is to learn about it. Write something about it explaining what you just learned. If you’ve written five or six of these articles, then, while job searching, you can show that you understand what you learn, you can explain those topics, and that you can write interesting articles about that topic that are fun to read.

David: Spend some time writing small tools to help other developers. Now, many languages have package management systems. A couple of examples are NPM for NodeJS, PIP for Python, and many other tools. Find something that always annoyed you when you were developing something and perhaps no one wrote a tool or they did a poor job of creating a tool.