Tips for Networking at Tech Events| Andrew Whelan

Anyone know Edith Young? Anybody ever heard of Edith? I'm a big fan of Edith. So, I would highly recommend that you reach out to Edith and you become part of her newsletter. Every week you will get a breakdown of all the funding within a 300-mile radius of Silicon Valley. Why is that important? If you want to know and you want to work for a specific company or interested in a specific industry, you should be looking at this because it will tell you where the money's going and who's investing it. So you'll be like, oh, they're putting a ton of money in virtual reality right now. We all know that. But what I don't know is there's a ton of money going into personal banking that is virtual reality. And do I want to look at that too? Right? It'll break it down that specifically. So you want to start to think about that. And it also has certain events that she recommends. It's a great newsletter. It's super simple. It comes every week. Sign up for it. You should also start building your digital identity. How many of you Have a Twitter account or a Facebook page that is set only for your growth as a professional? How many of you have a Facebook page with you doing a keg stand as your— Excellent. Great. Well, I hope that's the business you're starting. So my suggestion would be start to put together your information so that you in fact are utilizing this. I will tell you right now, everybody's going to look at it. Because we're human beings and we're nosy, right? Like, you do it all the time. How many of you have Facebooked your other classmates or checked each other out digitally to be like, what's this person really done? Right? We do it. I consulted not too long ago on a pretty high-level job. And the committee had signed off on the candidate. And one of them checked the candidate's Facebook page and saw some things on there that they were really morally opposed to. So they came back in and said, I do not want this person hired, and that person didn't get hired. So pay attention to it now and start building it professionally and start showing. Because if your Twitter feed, if you're connected to people that you want to network with, that you're following, that you're retweeting, Instagram's the same way, Facebook, any of these things, if you utilize these as tools now, people will check you out and see that you mean business. It's an extra piece of the puzzle that differentiates you from other people, and they will go, oh wow, you are not a joke. You are seriously following every angle you can to build your community. It's gonna be huge for you.

I have a question.

Yes!

Sorry, we all participate in our workshops, so just not for the students. I have a quick question. So one of the things that we hear the most from different people who come and do workshops here is concentrate on one social media platform. So if you're going to do Twitter, just do Twitter well. If you're going to do Instagram, do Instagram well. Thoughts, suggestions?

Thoughts, suggestions, likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams. Yes, I like that question. And again, I don't have all the answers, and I may have different opinions, so utilize what works best for you. I will tell you that the more that you use the more people you reach, right? Because everybody else out there is taking that suggestion and using one avenue in order for them to reach people. And I like to use my creating a business, my job seeking as a prototype. So if I invest everything into one social media and I'm not getting the results I want, I've got to take a serious look at that and start to look at others. It doesn't mean you have to do them all at once. But as a prototype, everyone knows what a minimum viable product is, right? Everyone understands what prototyping is. If I utilize this as a prototype and I test it, and if I'm using Twitter and I'm getting a lot of response from people I want to get response from, then I'm probably going to use that for a while because I'm too busy with other stuff. But I'm not getting the results I want, I've got to make changes to how I use that social media, and I'm going to try Instagram. The other thing is, it's all connected anyway. What business do you want to build? What business do you want to be in? What did they use? Because if I'm in a business and I want to work in a field that's using multiple areas of social media, I should know them because that's going to come up in the interview. Does that help? So, I like the idea of testing all and getting the information you have. You might decide at some point, because look, everyone at some point is going to be like, Twitter, eh. Snapchat, hey, professional Snapchat, whatever it may be, or however the world will work in the next several years. So, if you have that ability to be flexible, it works well too for companies and for your company. Once you build your company, because you're going to be like, oh wow, I'm getting X amount of business this way. My data scientists are telling me they predict I should be moving into this. You've got to be able to be comfortable with both. I like blogging to start. Don't care if it's any good. How many of you are like, I don't write?

Practice.

Excellent. The only way you become good at something is if you practice, right? We live in this world where it's either perfect or it's horrible, right? Like, if I don't do it perfect from day one, I suck and this is horrible. And the truth is we all live in the middle somewhere. So my suggestion is start to write. Don't care if you put it out there yet, but create your voice in the world. It could be something like, I'm going to write a blog about the last 5 days of my work here and post the last 5 days and then the last year of school or how I built my company or something like that because when I check you out and I'm interested in you, I know that you're that person that does a bit more and I can see your growth. I can see what you do. It will get traction if you stick with it. Don't do one article and then walk away, right? That's hard. If you're gonna do it, really do it, but if you wanna be part of the community that you're gonna be in when you leave here, start to figure it out. Maybe it's not a blog, maybe it is Instagram, maybe it's something else, but find something that you can contribute beyond the, I know I gotta do this to get a job, or I know I gotta do this to start a company, because down the road, the education you give yourself by doing the research, by going through the labor of doing this means a lot, and I'll tell you why. When you practice this, if you build your own company, in the beginning you may not have someone to hire to do press releases. You may not have someone to hire to do descriptions of your company. You may not have someone to hire right away to do a lot of the work you need to do, which might include onboarding stuff for your new employees. So if you start to practice this, It means I'm not so afraid to write a little bit now, right? 'Cause we all— I do this a lot. Like, I'll start writing something and I immediately envision someone reading it and then I'm like, ugh, and I stop. 'Cause I'm like, someone who reads this is gonna think I'm not very bright. So what I do is I try to remove that and I go, look, I'm just writing this for me. It's first draft. I will ask for help and then move on from there. But if you practice this, now you've got something to say.

Right?

How many of you have been to a networking event and felt like you had nothing to say? What do you do then? Grab the free food and run? Make up a bunch of stuff. Make up a bunch of stuff. What if somebody's in there and they're not in a good mood and they call you on it? What happens then? Do the same thing back. Do the same thing back and then grab free food and run. Excellent. I would suggest to you That if you actually start to build your base of knowledge, then you can pick and choose when you bring that into the conversation and people will start to hear what you have to say, right? And then the way that you have that interaction is much more confident. I'd rather have 2 quality interactions at a networking event than 6 that are like, look, I talked to people. The same way that I'd rather have 20 great connections on LinkedIn than 500 I don't know. Because those 500 I don't know do nothing for me. They utilize nothing for what I'm trying to get. But those 20 are working for me every day, and that's what I'm looking to do. Make sense? All right.