2 magical V’s that will get you a better job
Visible, Valuable
It is no secret that the current labor market in the USA is currently quite strong, although there are a few signs that it is starting to loosen a little bit. Regardless of how you feel about the political/economic reasons about why things are how they are, or the macro powers that be trying to cool off the labor markets, now is a good time to try and get yourself a good job.
However the question becomes, how do you make yourself an ideal candidate and generate interest from prospective employers, both actively and passively? I believe that it comes down to 2 qualities you should try and exhibit every day.
Being Visible and Valuable.
On the surface it seems pretty straightforward, you want employers to notice you and you would like them to appreciate your skills and knowledge and see them as worthy enough to bring you aboard. But you need to keep in mind that there are hundreds of other candidates looking to stand out as well, so you need to do your best to differentiate yourself as much as possible.
Being visible is more than just blasting out applications to as many places as you can (although this strategy is not wrong). You need to be engaged where your prospective employers are both digitally and physically. Are you writing articles to make yourself appear as a subject matter expert and sharing them on forums related to the skills and field you want to get into? Are you going to meetups where people will be either actively hiring or there will be speakers from companies you are interested in present giving talks? Are you posting and engaging with like minded individuals on LinkedIn?
The internet is so large and vast that you need to feed the algorithms activity so that they push you and your posts/content to the forefront more reliably. You will not appear in searches or people’s news feeds if you are not actively engaging or regularly posting. This does not mean put your entire life of LinkedIn, personally I do not share really anything about my social life (I started this habit around the beginning of COVID and it has been wonderful).
It does however mean pushing out content you create that demonstrates your skills in an area you want to be hired for on a semi-regular basis. My articles on Medium that are engaged with the most and I feel are most helpful and engaging are pushed out to LinkedIn and other Medium publishers to get more engagement and keep people familiar with my name and work.
Make sure that when you go to meetups (a very important job hunting strategy), you are making an effort to have conversations with people, in particular those with jobs you would like to find yourself in, or companies you want to find yourself at. It does not have to be a deep and complex conversation about machine learning models or whatever else, but a simple “hey I really enjoyed xyz thing about that presentation you gave” will suffice, and then go from there. You are much more likely to be remembered if you actually interact with someone instead of just sitting in a crowd, and making that connection may help you when you put in an application at their company later on.
You also need to ensure you are continuously making yourself as valuable as possible. This means preparing to go into a job with a directly applicable set of skills that can be used, and not just expecting to be trained up on the job in whatever technology, stack, or skill would be required. This may mean doing some research and work on your own time, but take comfort in knowing that any piece of knowledge that has ever existed is out on the internet, and the vast majority of it is free.
Additionally, make yourself valuable by continuing to get top notch, in-demand certifications and not just be satisfied with the bare minimum. You went to an engineering bootcamp? Great, so did hundreds of thousand of other people. Let me see your AWS, PMP, Azure, or other advanced certifications that are relatable to the field you want to get into.
Getting certified shows employers that you are willing to commit your time money and effort to learning important skills. Skills that you can bring to the company to help them grow while you grow as well. Don’t be satisfied with the must haves, strive to get the nice to haves as well.
I hope this helps you in your journey to find your next job, and hopefully it is the one that you fall in love with and gives you everything you want and more. However to find yourself in that position it is going to take patience and persistence over time.
So, make yourself visible and valuable, and over time employers will come to you with job offers without you having to go out and find them first.
