Navigating Your Career and Job Search w/Leon Noel

All righty, morning everybody. No, no one's here yet. No one's here. Leon, how's your morning going, man?

Where are you at?

You're in the office?

Nice. This is my virtual background.

Are you serious?

Yeah, that is awesome. I join meetings, people do this. Yeah, they just stare at the guy in the background until he loops.

Uh, do you have Do you have it to where you serve yourself coffee? Have you seen those?

I've seen those before. No, I just have a lot of different stuff for my students. Like when I need my students to lock in, we get the Minecraft background going, you know, get the hyperfocus so that they can listen to every word I'm saying. And so I've seen the coffee one, but I normally roll with the office.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, good morning, everybody.

Morning.

Muhammad, good morning, good morning. It's good to see you. So y'all say hey, we'd love to hear from you. I wanna get right into it today. Y'all know the drill. Please say hey. This is a networking platform. Leon's big on this as well. I really just want y'all to connect with everybody, right? I've been doing this for 5 years this year.

That's cool.

And Leon's the first. So it took me 5 years to get Leon. But happy he's here. We met at Commit Your Code. Leon, obviously, you know, wanna give you your flowers. Been a big fan of you for a long time and what you're doing, what you're building. It's very special.

Sure.

And it's very hard to do. And so, again, what you're doing and what you've done is amazing. So props to you. Everybody, please connect with Leon. I know y'all obviously probably know him, but please connect with him if you have not. And then y'all connect with each other in chat. Wanna give 2 announcements real, real fast. Shout out to Appwrite. I'm an Appwrite Hero. Jason Torres is an Appwrite Hero. They're doing some great stuff. Go check them out. And we got some of the Appwrite Heroes coming on the show here soon. So excited to talk about what Appwrite's doing more in depth. detail. Um, uh, also check out our community site. We got a lot going on in the community. Jason's doing a lot of heading up. Um, and we've just kind of relaunched kind of our job search community on the Discord. A lot of how-to guides, how to interview, how to write a resume. Really trying to just get back on my content over the last 4 years. If you want to get updated on when I go live, please text, uh, text me. This is actually my number. This is— it comes to me. It's not AI. It's not automated. Um, it's kind of like my work line, as I say. So text that. And again, everybody tuning in, Richard, Roxy, Jason, Emmett, Taya, Mark, Ricardo, JC, Chris. It's great to see y'all this morning. Emre, what's going on, big dog? Let's see here. Yeah, so we got the crew this morning. Devon from Dallas, I love it. Chris from Nashville. Cool. All right. Leon, I know people, I know a lot of people know who you are.

Yeah.

But talk about what you've built with 100Devs, Resilient Coders, and then I'll dive in and kind of pepper you with some questions.

Yeah, sure. So, uh, Resilient Coders, we're 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 as software engineers. With 100Devs, I had been running programs like Resilient Coders that were smaller, um, more selective.

Sure.

Pandemic hit, I wanted to be helpful. I'm not a doctor, could it— 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 3 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+ people that would join every single class. And then by For our second cohort, it kind of really exploded. We'd have thousands of people that would join for each class.

Amazing.

And that's morphed into hundreds and hundreds, if not at this point thousands of people that have gotten jobs as software engineers. We're 70,000+ strong on Discord. Our most recent class, also sponsored by Appwrite, shout out Appwrite. There you go.

There you go.

We had about 2,000 concurrent live folks in that class, about 80,000 unique viewers. Uh, so we, we just try and make a place for folks that are learning, uh, 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 a coding program. Sure. A space where they can learn, be comfortable, uh, and grow.

Yeah, I love that. And there's been a lot of intersection too with 100Devs and Torque, which has been awesome.

Yeah, of course.

Um, which I'm super pumped about. So, all right, man, I, I know— so I know you, I know you have a great podcast with Danny. Um, 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 seen in the market? Where do you think people are struggling? Um, and, and, uh, yeah, let's just go ahead and start there. Where, where do you think people are really missing the mark right now?

Yeah, I, I think, 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, 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 100Devs 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 equaling result, you get burnout. And so I understand a lot of people are burnt out. So the first and 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.

Great.

We have about 400 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 5+ people getting jobs, sometimes 5+ 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 too. Maybe it isn't 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 this a little bit, is, um, is great. Yeah, the, 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, we all have a smell that we have to figure out. It's something—

I've never heard this.

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 them go, hmm, maybe I should look at another candidate. And 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— put 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 20 one-on-ones last week. People didn't have right titles. They weren't talking about themselves in the highest—

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, I, when I spoke last week, um, in Amsterdam, the, 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 you.

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, you have to sweat the details. Your LinkedIn needs to be good. Your, your resume needs to be good. Your, your every part of that online presence, whatever that first line of defense is, you need somebody in under 6 seconds to go, this person is a software engineer, and I won't get in trouble if I put them in front of the nerds, right? Like, 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.

Yeah.

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. Yep.

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 6 seconds, and then tell her, what do you know about me?

Dude, dude, I talk about— I, I actually pull a lot of this when on the marketing side and kind of branding and content. Like, if my 70-year-old mother doesn't understand what I'm saying or what I'm writing, yep, 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, then their email, their phone number, their address, everything underneath that block, and people are reading that down. And so then it's like, oh, so you actually didn't know anything about me. Or they make it to the summary statement, if you, if you have one, and it's like, I work on agile teams. Great, I know nothing about you, right?

Yeah.

And then maybe, 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 there's no way for us to figure out who you are, what you're about.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, one of the things I talk a lot about is when I help with resumes, it's really— 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 gonna call you because I don't know what these small companies are. I have no idea. Yeah, exactly. So again, and you have to remember too, Typically, the first people looking at your resume are not technical. They're dumb recruiters.

Yep.

And they're control effing, 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 will not get called. You know, I want to go back to what you were saying. I think it's so important. In my, my live 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. First you smell, you gotta 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 as 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? Like, you only get so many times to interview, only so many times to, to shoot your shot. But what if you could learn from 100 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 worked 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. Uh, you don't get the encouragement, you don't get the compounding of experience, and you just feel isolated. And so, yes, this is not an easy career for a lot of folks in terms of— if you're talking about software engineering, it's, it's, it ebbs and flows. Layoffs are part of the game. You, you need a, a group of people that can help you ride out the roller coaster. to reinforce the things that you're doing and to bring you that little bit of belief.

Yeah.

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, it all works long-term too, right? The folks that you're in community with now are your peers. You are all gonna go out into the world, you're all gonna get hired, and eventually those teams are gonna need to hire other engineers. Everyone's asking themselves the 3 big questions now. Who do I know? Who can I— who do my friends know? And if not, how can I poach internally when I'm hiring?

Yeah.

And so you are just missing a whole level of opportunities and jobs if you don't have a community of folks, a network of individuals that understand the shared experiences that you've gone through, that understand your talent, uh, 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+ years. I think it's the thing that opens the most doors. I think it's the thing that gets 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, guess where they're going first?

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Let me, uh, Justin comes in here, uh, the laid-off Slack for the company that has 70 of us. Uh, has been huge for morale as well. And, uh, tips and tricks, great for what's working and what's not in today's market. Support systems, huge, 100%. Um, uh, let me, uh, I, 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 meetup a month.

Yeah.

Um, one thing that I did when I was in the, in the Raleigh market for a year, um, is I went every week because I was single.

Right.

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 falling behind, right? I mean, people are showing up to 100Devs in droves, right? 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, you know, if a job were to pop up and somebody were to hit me up, I would literally source from the community. It's just how it works. And that's the same thing too with companies too. Like, listen, they don't wanna go through 700 job postings or 700 applicants. Like Kelly Vaughn texts me all the time when she posts a role and she's like, I literally have 700 engineers for, a senior spot, one senior spot.

Yeah. And, and Kelly's one of the good ones. They're probably gonna look at all of them, right? All the folks that I talk to, yeah, they're not, correct? It's too overwhelming. And half of them are AI, half of it's bots. Like, that's hyperbole, but like, it's just, it's too muddied right now. The water's too muddy. There's too much going on that it's overwhelming for anybody that's strapped to get this many, this much talent. Hey, Roselle! This much talent into into their, into their companies. They're doing something different nowadays. And they're going, 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, they have to get 5 connections. And then they have to get 3 coffee chats. So they go off and on. And every single week, they have to go to 2 in-person events. Yes, 2 in person. Right.

These things.

2 in-person events, right? And so that's the minimum. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

At 100Devs, we have similar requirements too, where it's like you have to get out there, you have to build these relationships. And what I want people to understand is, yes, it's a lot of work. It is, it's, 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 they're 100,000th application gets ghosted for the 100,000th time. It's just not how you play the game right now.

Yeah.

We have a saying at 100Devs that we never click apply. We're not clickers. Uh, that's my advice, and that's 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 opportunities. You have to network your way in. And if you find yourself, um, not actively building out a list of companies that are actively hiring Finding people at those companies, building real relationships, growing your network outside. You're fundamentally doing the wrong thing if you want to get a job.

Uh, you, you've brought up networking a few times now. I know we're, you 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. Uh, 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, a slice of pizza or some coffee.

Slice of coffee.

Yeah, slice of coffee.

It's not coffee, it's like frozen coffee.

And I see you, we make eye contact, and I do this, right? That's it. And then next, next month, the same interaction happens. You do that a third time, we're acquaintances.

You're going up.

We're good. That's it. We know each other. I, I could add you on LinkedIn. Like, we could have not said a word. That familiarity, seeing each other in real physical spaces, is the first step to connection. And that's all you have to do. Just be present. If you're present, people start to recognize you, and, and, 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 hopefully work on those things. On our Discord at 100Devs, 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.

Yes.

They don't even have to be technical.

Yes.

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 Pokémon than I do about code at meetups, right? It's, it's, it has nothing to do with your technical ability, has nothing to do with your ability to write the best, the most performant code. It's just trying to make a friend. 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 like a framework to follow so that you know how to have conversations, you're not stumbling. Uh, 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, to see it.

Yeah.

If somebody makes a post on Twitter, they want you to see it. And if you like it, they're gonna see that you liked it. Yes, you just got to do that a couple of times until 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 has transformed in the last 4 years because I've liked and commented on people's statuses.

There you go. That's it.

I went from a recruiter to now whatever I do, right?

Like, like, community, put it on your shirt. Come on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like 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, one of the reasons why we do, I think lives like this are so important, 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 Matt knows Roxy, right? But Roxy could message Matt and be like, hey, I saw you on Guidance Counselor 2.0 today, would love to chat.

There you go.

Then there's like an immediate— there's immediate commonality, which I think 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— now granted, you and I met at 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 DMs?

I think the problem with me is that I go through spurts where I have time and time where I literally am scheduling bathroom breaks, right? And so—

Yes, I think I got to go to the bathroom.

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 follow-ups like, hey, 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 that's something I'm working on. I want to be able to respond to everyone, but it's just, it's just a lot.

Sure.

And so the way I like to be approached is just— has nothing to do with code, job. If you mention 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 too, is like this idea that You either try 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 3 things, the likelihood of you getting a response goes through the roof.

Yep, absolutely. Well, usually what I like to do, and literally, I mean, I take my own advice. Prime example, I posted on my Instagram today. I literally, I think the algorithm's getting really good on X. I've started to engage with a lot of D2C founders, started liking their stuff. And, 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 his stuff, like his stuff, like his stuff. Then I slid into his DMs like, hey, I'm a, you know, would love to try your product. I know a bunch of people. I didn't know if he had an affiliate code. He set me up, sent me some sample and I love it. And now I'm repping it.

That's dope.

Like, like everything I say is what I do.

Right.

And again, I, I think training, being, being a traditional agency recruiter for, uh, 11 years has taught me the skills. Everything I teach you all is everything we were taught as a recruiter. As a recruiter, we were, we were required to meet 3 new people a day.

That's dope.

Yeah, coffee, like, like a, like a, like a meaningful— and 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 a fair amount of people, right? So again, everything, everything I say, um, uh, you know, is, is the things I've done. Um, I— we're already 7 minutes left. I know you probably gotta go to the bathroom at 10 o'clock Central, so I, I, I really want to get— is there anything else that, 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 call it 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 at the very, very end, it gets worse before it gets to the wiggles of false hope and then into the promised 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 100Devs, 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. Does not 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, um, an approach which means that you shouldn't be going into your days like an accident. Have a game plan for each day.

Yeah, 100%.

Know what your goals are for that day. Know what small steps you are taking that will eventually lead you to the job. Uh, we tend to hyperfocus on the end goal, which is getting the job, but we'd be way better served if we had things that were in our control each day. I'm gonna engage with 10 people on Twitter. I'm going to engage with 20 people on LinkedIn. Like these things that if you do them enough, lead to opportunity but are fully in your control so that you don't burn out.

Yeah.

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 that uplifts 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 about it all the time, but network— I mean, networking is everything now. I mean, 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, Um, it's, it's gonna be absolutely massive. It's gonna be absolutely massive. Um, I, I, I want to be able to obviously plug, um, what you're doing. What's, what's, what's the best way to get in 100Devs and, and Resilient Coders and all that?

Yeah, you can, uh, we're on Discord. Uh, you can always just search 100Devs on Google, 1-0-0-D-E-V-S, 100Devs. Uh, we'll pop right up. Click that link, join us on Discord. Um, once you join Discord, you're joining a community of 70,000 people. We'll be live today. at 5:30 PM Eastern time, uh, and tomorrow, which will be Friday, 5:30 PM Eastern time for folks that are with us live. And then if you're watching this as a recording, uh, we're live pretty much every Tuesday and Friday, 5:30 PM Eastern time.

Love it.

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, uh, definitely check out Resilient Coders. And, uh, also, uh, gotta plug the podcast Global 40 podcast right now. Super pumped. Programming podcasts.

I love it. That's awesome. Well, y'all, thank you again for this. Thank y'all again for showing up. Leon, thank you, my friend, so, so much. Stay on so I can say bye to you backstage. But y'all have a fantastic one. Love to see you in the Torque Discord. Love to see you, them, obviously in the 100Devs Discord. Those balloons are killing me. Y'all have a great Thursday. Last Guidance Counselor of the week. Y'all have a great one.

Take it easy.

Peace out.

Peace out.