Getting more programming job offers as a programmer never hurts, huh? If you're worried about getting a job as a programmer, you must be facing some squeeze situations that might be leaving you worried.
First scenario is: when you’re just getting started, it seems like it’s impossible to break into the market. Everybody wants to hire somebody with experience. How do you overcome this? How to get programming job offers at this stage?
Second scenario could be: You're an experienced developer that finds yourself stuck in your career. You wish you could take a leap and skyrocket your career, but you find yourself stuck and watching your hourly rate moonwalk.
What if I told you you could get 5x more programming job offers as a programmer? Does it sound like something you'd want? Does it sound like a dream?
in fact, it is for most developers. They try so hard to get a job that the idea of getting lots of job offers sound impossible to them.
But… What are you saying John? you saying that there is a way to get more job offers as a programmer?
Definitely. And the key thing here is to learn how to market yourself as a software developer.
In this video we'll discuss how you can get more job offers as a programmer by marketing yourself. Tactics include:
– Create a programming blog
– Build a personal brand
– Write consistent blog posts
– Trust the process!
Are you interested in how to get 5x more job offers as a programmer? Watch this video and find out!
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Transcript Of The Video
John Sonmez: Today I'm going to talk about one of my most favorite subjects to talk about in the programming world, and the whole world in general, which is how to market yourself as a software developer and get job offers.
Hey, what is up? It is John Sonmez here from Simple Programmer.com. Why should you market yourself? I've done a whole course on this. I'm not going to even talk about the course right now because I want to focus on this, because there's so much to say about marketing yourself and how important it is.
Look, you're watching me on video. Have I marketed myself? Yes. Obviously, if you're watching me, you've gone to Simple Programmer maybe. I built the whole business off of this, but before I did that, I built my career off of this. And let me tell you the story. Let's talk about how I marketed myself, and then I'm going to give you some principles that you can use to market yourself.
I started off, just a normal software developer. Okay, I'm not going to give you my whole story, but essentially, I got jobs working at HP, Xerox, a couple of start-ups. I've been around the block. I'm just a normal developer. I was mentor a lot of times. I read a lot of books. I was good. I was really technically good; I could code anything. I was just really good. I was good at what I did. I did Top Coder for a while. I excelled on there. It was a coding competition. I honed my skills. I was really good. I read so many books. Especially, I was really good at C++ at one point. I made good money. Don't get me wrong.
I started out making really good money, actually, like over 100K a year, I ended up making around the 100s for most of my career. I quit doing this, what, like five or six years ago, okay? But I had, maybe, a good 10 year period where I was sort of stuck. Nothing really happened for me. Until, here's what happened. Let me tell you what happened is, I was at this one job, this contract, working for a government agency, and I was working with these teams, and I was having problems communicating to the teams and telling them what they needed to do. They were not understanding these best practices, and I nkew this and it frustrated me because I had been doing Scrum, and I understood, and I had all the reading on this, and I knew how to write good code and how to do unit testing and all this stuff.
I started a blog: Simple Programmer.com. It's called Making the Complex simple, right? And the whole idea behind this was that I was tired of people telling everyone how hard it was, and I wanted to show you how easy it is. Let's make the complex simple. Okay? I started writing these blogs posts, mostly to communicate to my team and to the managers, in a written format, so I don't get interrupted, kind of passive-aggressively, what were the best practices, and why, and give this rationale. And I knew my co-workers would read it. I knew my bosses and all that. They read it and I got a lot of respect for that, just because it was published on the internet, because they could hear my ideas. For some reason, it had more authority. It was kind of interesting. And then, nothing really happened.
I was doing three blog posts a week, and that was fine. I was just having fun doing this. And then, about a year passed and I started to look at the traffic and I started getting some traffic on this. All of a sudden, people in the community there, in Boise, especially when I go to code camp, said, “Oh, I know who you are. I read your blog.” And then, what was magical that happened, I remember one day sitting at work, and I got a phone call, and it was a company offering me a job. Now, I don't say interview; an interview for a job, I'm saying offering me a job. Like, straight-up offering me a job. And I said, “Well, what do you mean? Do you mean that you want me to interview for the job?” And they said, “No, all of our developers read your blog, and we know that you're qualified. We just want you to come work for us.”
And that's when the light bulb … You know, that light bulb moment? Right? That's when it hit, and I was like, “Wow. This is interesting. This is like in-bound marketing”, is what I'm thinking. And I didn't know a lot about marketing. I hadn't read all the marketing books and building a brand and all that, but an idea clicked off in my head, and I said, “I'm kind of building a personal brand here, and I'm marketing myself. What if I did this more?” I emailed Scott Hanselman. I didn't know him at the time. He's a friend of mine now. But I emailed him and I was like, “Hey, can I get on your podcast? I'll talk about Xamarin and MonoTouch.” So I did. And I was learning about stuff, and I was learning Android and iOS [inaudible 00:04:10], and I talked about fitness and fact on there. And man, oh my gosh, my co-workers went nuts. They're like, “Dude, I heard you on Hanselman. I heard you on the podcast.” Right?
All of a sudden, I'm getting this massive respect, and all these people reaching out to me, I got these opportunities. I got an opportunity to create courses for a company called Pluralsight. You can check out my courses. There are about 55 courses on that platform. Open the link in the description, as well. Eventually, that ended up making me millions of dollars, but that's another story.
But here's the thing: Building this brand, having this blog, Simple Programmer, it was getting me this marketing. I was getting this in-bound marketing. Okay? I was getting job offers. I was getting opportunities. When I started doing this podcast, I was getting opportunities. I started doing YouTube, I started doing my own podcast and getting on people's podcasts. I've probably been on hundreds of podcasts now, and people started to know me and know who I was. I got on [inaudible 00:05:02] Rocks, I got on all the big podcasts for developers. You probably haven't heard me on there for a while, because I've been focusing more on less programming stuff lately.
But pretty soon, what ended up happening, was I started getting consulting jobs. Okay? My bill rate at first, was 100 bucks an hour, then moved to 150 bucks an hour, and then I said, “Well, you know what? Let's try 200.” And I got 200. And then I was getting $300 an hour. As a software developer writing actual code, the highest bill rate that I ever achieved was around $500 an hour just writing code and consulting.
Now, as a coaching developer, and coaching people in general, I bill around $1500 an hour. No kidding, this is true. And this all comes from marketing, from marketing myself. Okay? Not from going and looking for jobs, not for going out there and having to ask people if I can get a job, or ask people if they need consulting work. They all came to me. My question is, wouldn't you like to do something like this. And the answer is yes. And the answer is, you can do this.
I'm going to have you some quick tips right now, okay? And then, here's what I want you to do: If you want to hear more about how to market yourself as a software developer, I do have a course on Simple Programmer.com. I think it's still for sale. I'm not sure. You might have to join the membership area to get it. Now, the membership is $99 a year. It might be more by the time you're watching this. I don't know. It's good. It's awesome stuff. You should definitely check it out, but it's Simple Programmer.com if you watch this video. But if you want me to talk more on this channel about it, just leave a comment. Thumbs up, whatever, and say, “Hey, I want to know more about how to market yourself.” Okay? All right.
Here's the things you can do right now. I'm going to plug some stuff here. I'm just going to let you know, but here's … It's good stuff, okay? The first thing is create a blog. Okay? Every software developer should have a blog. I tell this story all the time when I give talks, and I say, “How many of you in this room have a blog?” A lot of hands go up, maybe 50%. And I say, “How many of you write a post once a month, at least?” A lot of hands go down. And I say, “How many of you write a post once a week?” And there's maybe one hand remaining out of 200 developers. Be that one. You have a huge opportunity to market yourself just by creating a blog.
Now, I have a course, a free course, this is totally free, on how to create a blog to boost your career. Go sign up here. You sign up with your email address, and what's going to happen … There'll be a link in the description, as well … is you're going to get an email course that's going to teach you exactly how to build a blog step-by-step, and my best strategies; how to get traffic, all the stuff you need to do. That's the first step in marketing yourself. Sign up for that course and take the course, and actually go through it and do all the homework. I've got homework in there. Really critical. Thousands of developers have passed through this course and I have had amazing, amazing success stories just from doing that.
The next thing that you need to do is actually build yourself a nice personal brand. Get a logo if you can. Get a professional headshot done. Use that same imagery. Get some colors. Pretend like you're a business, because you are a business. I think Jay-Z said … What's his quote? He's like, “I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man.” Get a brand. Get a logo. Get that kind of stuff. Treat it like that. Create a website for yourself, and a brand on your blog, right? This is what you need to do. All right? Get a portfolio out there.
Now, as far as marketing yourself, develop a skill; a niche. Again, I talk about this in the blogging course, but pick something that you're going to be … I tell all my coaching clients, and they pay thousands of dollars for the same advice, pick something you're going to be number one best in the world at. I know that's a big bold statement. The way that you do that is that you slice things thin enough. There's always something. Okay? I've got a couple categories that I'm the best in the world at, I'm pretty damn sure, or I'm pretty damn close. One of them is teaching soft skills to software developers. Hell, I wrote the fucking book on it, right? Soft Skills for Software Developers. It's a best-selling book. That's what I do, is I teach software developers how to be cool. That's one of my things. Okay? There's no one better than me in the world at this. That's why I'm able to build this business, and that's why you're watching this video now. Okay? There's a couple of other things I can name in my other brands, but that's the key thing.
The third one is to promote yourself. People are not going to to pay attention unless you make them pay attention. They're not going to look at you and say, “Oh, you're such a great developer.” You got to be out there. You got to be putting blog posts. You got to go approach people. You got to go to speak at events, if you can. Code camps are fine, or user groups, right? You got to go out there and reach out to the Hanselmans and say, “Hey, can I get on your podcast? I've got something valuable to share with your audience, and I'm confident. I know this. I'm the number one best in the world at this thing. And look at my blog.” Okay? These are the basic steps to market yourself.
Again, if you want to know more, there's two things you can do: One, leave a comment below. Let me know, and I'll just make a free video for you guys. I don't need to sell you anything. Okay? But if you want it, leave a comment. Show me that you care.
And number two, if you want it now, just go to Simple Programmer.com. Go and check out the membership area, and you've got How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer course that I put out there. I believe that's how we're selling it now. I'm no longer the financial CEO guy, I'm just the guy that's here teaching you what I know.
There's a ton of resources on Simple Programmer. I've got plenty of blog posts on how to market yourself, so I've got that information out there. In fact, if you search how to market yourself as a software developer, I'm pretty sure you'll find my stuff, my course, something like that. But like I said, I'll just give it to you free on this YouTube channel if you're willing to wait for it. But start the blog now. Now, today, start the blog.
All right. That's all I go for you today, click that subscribe, and click that bell to get the notifications, so when I do create the next video on how to actually market yourself, and give you some more in-depth details … Give me subjects that you want on this, by the way, then you'll get that. All right, I'll talk to you next time. Take care.