Understand the values of marketing that will help to highlight your strengths
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Here are my takeaways from the great podcast with Swyx at DataTalks.Club. DataTalks.Club is a great community of data enthusiasts with weekly events and top speakers from the industry. In this blog post, you will understand the added value of Marketing yourself, and you will get some insights on how to get started. As I’m on my journey to get better at marketing and learning in public, I felt it would be interesting to share some points from the talk that resonated with me.
Why you should be able to market (yourself)
As a data engineer and technical person, marketing seems something far from our domain. When we think about marketing, we either see a cliche of suit guys selling things or a lame tv commercial ad. However, there are tons of reasons why you should be able to market and market yourself. Here are a few of them :
- Recognition and getting the salary you deserve.
- Being able to sell your opinion on a technical solution.
Get recognition
From finding jobs to promotions, getting recognition for your skills will obviously get you more money. One astonishing fact is the difference in the first salary when you are a young graduate. We are all unequal on this, and this is because some people sell themselves better than others. Juniors are often scared to negotiate salary, but in fact, there’s no harm in doing so, and recruiters are used to it. You need to learn how to do it.
Data Engineers sell every day.
Today, there are tons of options for solving a given technical problem. Tons of Programming languages, front-end frameworks, design patterns, and libraries. How do you agree to move forward on a particular solution? Yes, there are some technical facts you can evaluate, but at the very end, it’s also a matter of selling. Selling to your colleague, your team, or your manager. In the end, we are selling our services/time to our employer.
Find your personal brand.
While selling yourself may sound like a scam if you overdo it, it’s actually about finding what you are good at and what value you bring to the table. When you do that, you need to step back and reflect on your work. Find a good balance between what you would like to do, what you are good at, and what people are interested in.
Can people make memes of you? Is there something that you like to talk about often?
Whatever you decide to focus on, or which profile picture you are going to pick on social media, be consistent. Consistency and repetition will help you to grow your audience (or network) step by step.
Pick a domain you would like to share
As you need to prove certain expertise and ignite the interest, the narrower the better. It’s easier to be an expert in niches. How many people share the same problems that you solve?
If you look at existing content on Hacker News, YouTube, or podcasts, you can see what triggers interest and get inspired.
Learning in public
This may sound scary as we need to overcome the potential negative judgments of others. The truth is that as long as you are honest and humble, a lot of people will follow along your journey and give you feedback. What are you doing wrong? What are you doing well?
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field. – Niels Bohr
The cool thing about doing it in public is that you get more data points in terms of feedback than you would with your employer and standard reviews process. There’s no shortcut in expertise. You "just" have to learn and earn it.
Pick some mentors online, and engage with them. You can also do the same with companies.
Writing something for others is more challenging but comes with greater rewards. You will need to master it as much as possible, and you probably will remember it better afterward.
Landing your dream job
Depending on your expertise, you may want to focus on a certain type of company. Pre-filtering companies may be a good option. I talk about this in my blog post here.
Don’t be afraid to do free work and embrace opportunities. When you show dedication and commitment, often, opportunities start to show up.
If you are not getting your dream job/position, think about the long term. Is this going to give you at least a foot in the industry? Is it possible to move within the company later? It’s worth mentioning that getting into some company through the front door can be more challenging for certain positions than an internal move.
Internal marketing
It’s the same thing but with a smaller audience, and people have to listen because your work with them 😏 . Swyx gives us a couple of tips.
Brag document
Build a brag document, a 1–2 page summary of what you have accomplished at the company. Whenever you want to ask for a promotion, you will usually have to sell to your manager, who will probably sell your promotion case to someone else. Having a clear written starting point is a good idea to make sure the message is correctly spread. It also helps you to reflect on what you have been doing.
Use open channels
Standups, demo sessions, hackathons, and internal guilds are examples of places where you can engage, share, shine, and cheer up people.
Take initiatives
Be creative, start small, get feedback and growth. If you create interest for others, people will give you more responsibility.
Practice public speaking
Selling yourself on paper is a completely different thing than selling yourself verbally. Your tone, attitude, body language are all things that would increase or decrease the impact of your message.
Mastering all these take time, and it’s interesting to consider this a separate skill, and it will help organize your thoughts and communicate better.
Conclusion
Learning how to market yourself and learning it in public has an insane added value for your career. It takes time, courage but you shouldn’t be afraid to start and do baby steps!
Extra resources :
https://www.swyx.io/marketing-yourself/
https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/
Mehdi OUAZZA aka mehdio 🧢
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