How To Increase Your Visibility as a Developer
Discover your path to greater opportunities
Hi lovely readers,
Today I'd like to talk about how you can increase your visibility and opportunities as a developer. Think of opportunities such as landing that dream job, receiving free tech swag, or being invited to events. The sky is the limit!
There are some things you can do to increase the chances in your career. Allow me to tell you about them.
Join a community
You can’t get more visibility if no one knows you exist. This is why it’s a good idea to join a community and get to know other people, Twitter and LinkedIn are two options that are very popular in 2022 and this is where you can get so many opportunities if you start building stuff in public and grow your audience.
Another important aspect of joining a community is to make friends or acquaintances with the people you enjoy interacting with. It makes social media much more enjoyable and you might be able to help each other out in the future or learn from each other's experiences.
How do you grow an audience? Some fantastic blog posts can help you with that!
Twitter:
'I got 25K followers & a job at Hashnode within 2 months in Tech Twitter! My advice' by Yuri Lee
'The Truth About Twitter Growth' by Yosra Emad
LinkedIn:
'How To Grow Your LinkedIn Network' by Garry Lee
'2175 LinkedIn Followers in 31 Days. 6 Awesome Tips to Grow Your LinkedIn Following' by Chris
Get into open source
If you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘open source’, here’s a short explanation. Open Source projects are projects that are created and maintained by a community of developers, without them getting paid for it (most of the time). Everybody can alter or modify the project if they wish to do so.
You can help these open source projects by becoming one of those developers that assist with coding new features or solving bugs. You only need a GitHub account. Coding for the developer community demonstrates not only your ability to collaborate with others but also that you know how to work with existing code; see it as extra work experience.
Check out Eddiehub if this sounds like something you'd be interested in. The Eddiehub community is a very inclusive community that will assist you in getting started. They will also answer any questions you may have about open source.
Join Hackathons
Hackathons are competitions, usually in teams, in which you can brainstorm and code together on a solution to a problem in a limited amount of time. It can be a lot of fun, you will learn a lot and it will demonstrate to others that you know how to work under pressure. Another big thing is that it’s a great networking possibility and of course the most exciting thing of all, prizes 🏆
Want to join any of them? Look at:
Create videos or blog posts
It is difficult to explain topics to others, especially technical topics. If you have the talent to teach or explain these topics clearly, people will be thankful for you doing that and start supporting your work. You will also feel the satisfaction of helping people out in their learning journey. Everyone appreciates a good teacher
Some people prefer talking over writing, while for others it’s the opposite. If you already got an idea of what you prefer, great! If you don’t know yet, just try out both. Look at how others that write similar blog posts or videos do it. The rest will be trial and error.
Join local meet-ups/conferences
Participating in local meet-ups, conferences or any other coding-related events is an excellent way to meet people in your local developer community. This can be especially useful if you’re looking for future opportunities or jobs in your own country. Networking and learning things with others in these environments can be a lot of fun.
Looking for meetups? There’s probably something to your liking at Meetup. com
Find a mentor
Getting help from a mentor doesn’t create more visibility directly. However, they can be of great assistance in terms of creating content or career advice that can lead to opportunities. Find someone who makes content in the form that you prefer (video’s/blog posts/tweets) about a topic you’re interested in. Alternatively, find someone who has a job or career that you would like to pursue in the future.
If you want to find a mentor, I have one big disclaimer you should keep in mind. Don’t just message a random stranger and tell them you’re looking for a mentor. First, make some small talk, and have a fun conversation. Most mentor-mentee relationships begin as friendships or at least acquaintances who have similar goals, interests, and passions. You can’t expect someone to take time out of their day for free for a stranger, having that personal connection is important.
That’s a wrap!
Thank you for reading. I hope this can help you in your (future) career as a developer. If you have any suggestions or tips, feel free to leave a comment or contact me on Twitter at @lovelacecoding. See you later!