Bad at Interviews? Let Your Code Do The Talking

Coders are traditionally not the most warm and friendly people. Most people, when they think about coders, think of this:

Yes that is a depiction of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.  Award, difficult to deal with, but a genius.

That is not a terrible thing, and people looking to hire coders often just want someone who is extremely good at their job.  It does help if you can listen and react well, but sometimes, it’s more about the code you create.  So like it’s been said a million times on this site, go and create things.  They do not have to be commercial ideas, they can be scrapers or algorithms, just have something in your portfolio that is impressive.

Then, when you get in front of a company, you do not have to explain what you know, you can just show them.

It also helps to create something that pushes the limits of what you know and applies as much coding knowledge as you have.  Go nuts!

Related posts:

1. My Tech Interviews
2. Replace Your Job With A Website
3. Before You Try To Get A Tech Job, Build Stuff

Before You Try To Get A Tech Job, Build Stuff

It’s great to go through a coding school and learn the in’s and out’s of whatever code language is in question, but potential hirers want to see what you have built.  Often times, it does not have to be specific to what they do, they just want to see your ability to be creative and apply your knowledge.  In the best case scenario, you will be able to get a few freelance clients, which often leads to more and more conversation about you (assuming you do a good job).

One Project Leads to Another
Sometimes a client may subtly ask you questions that seem not to pertain to the current project you are working on. If you are smart about reading your client, you may begin to understand that he or she is feeling you out for a potential new project. When your client asks strange questions about other things, sit back and answer the questions carefully, and just assume that there may be other work in the future.

In addition, you may want to subtly mention to your client about something else you are building or working on—not because you want to scare him or her about your availability, but because it will increase his or her perception of your value.
Patience
Honestly, sometimes it just takes time. There are only so many large projects to be had out there, and only so many will fall into your particular skill set. Generally, it is a good idea to sync up with other developers or other people and work as a team so sometimes you get a piece of a big job you don’t have to get yourself.

If you would prefer to work alone, give it time and seek out large projects that fit you perfectly.

Related posts:

1. The Problem With ODesk, Elance, Freelancer and Others
2. Using Twitter To Get Web Development Clients Part 1
3. Strategies To Gain U.S Based Clients

How Content Advertising Can Land You A job

A big trend in the past couple years has been clickbait content ads. If you are reading a story on Taylor Swift and you get to the bottom and see a bunch of pictures and titles of other pieces of interesting content, chances are, they are ads. These are quite popular and have the potential to pay publishers off huge ($5-$8 CPM is what they claim). The problem is, in order for them to pay off huge, you need to have a strong click-through rate. For instance, a user who clicks through a content link and then leaves the other site quickly is far less valuable than a user who clicks through the photo gallery they are showing.

That is on the publisher side of things. If you are looking to get hired, you can choose to target your audience with a well placed piece of content. For example, if you are looking to get hired as an SEO specialist, You could write an article about the “biggest SEO break-through of the year” and then use sites like Taboola, Content.ad, and Zergnet to promote it. It costs only around $.05 per click, and whereas a high % of your audience won’t be what you want, you can best some % of the audience will.

Set low budgets and start small. But even if it takes a small investment from you, isn’t it worth it to be noticed in the end?

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