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Critical moment, the first time to arrive!

By Rick West

Translation | An Xiang

As a PHP developer, traffic to my blog and social media accounts has increased since I started having a presence on the site. It’s only a slight increase, but it’s still exciting for me and makes me more passionate.

For personal branding, this is something I’ve neglected until recently.

I’m happy in my current job and wouldn’t consider changing jobs for a while, but I underestimated the importance of being active online.

Just last week, I realized how simple I used to be.

My wake-up call came when the company I work for was recently recruiting for multiple positions and was flooded with applications. To my surprise, my boss googled applicants’ names to see how they performed online.

My boss is using this approach to find positive contributor information. He didn’t go on Facebook to try to find out what the candidates did on Friday night. He was more interested in:

  • Does the applicant have a blog?

  • Any other special interests?

  • Hot projects outside of work?

This reminded me of my own “personal brand,” and I decided to start catching up on my online presence. About the construction of personal brand, the author has done some of his own attempts and thinking here, hoping to be helpful to everyone.

Perfect blog

If you don’t already have a blog, try buying a domain name {your name}.com. If.com is not available, then.co.uk or another local TLD is available.

If do commercial website, so have special meaning domain name is very good. However, if you are building a personal brand, the domain name should be related to your own name.

It’s not just about getting 1,000 visitors to your site. It’s about personal branding. Eventually, a potential employer or client may Google your name.

It’s not expensive to build a personal blog. You can quickly start your personal blog journey with WordPress, a free theme. In addition, there are other platforms like Jekyll available. WordPress is very simple to use and does not rely on any other Settings.

The interface of a blog doesn’t have to be fancy, it’s an online space where people can find you, get to know you better and get in touch with you if they need to.

It’s best not to polish every blog post and spend too much time tinkering. Self-learning and spending time with family are also important parts of life. Just keep Posting regularly.

Don’t worry that your article doesn’t have enough technical depth. Because even if you are a beginner programmer, there are beginners out there who are better than you, even if you have only a month, a week, or even a day more experience than they have, there is someone out there who can benefit from your article.

Writing about something other than technology is fine, and sharing your interests and expertise is a great way to show off your unique personality beyond code. Just try not to be controversial.

Use social networks like Twitter and Twitter

I’m not a big fan of social networking. But considering my personal branding, I decided to set up a Twitter account.

Twitter is a great way to reach out to the big shots in your network. For example, I recently posted a tweet expressing my interest in learning about the Slim framework. To my surprise, the first respondent turned out to be one of the core contributors to the framework. Who better to advise and guide than him?

Being in the community gives you access to cutting-edge technology news and industry news. With Twitter you can greet people and get to know them before they go to meetings.

Remember, your tweets can be seen all over the world. So please tweet as helpful, kind, and valuable as you can. Meaningless tweets about three meals a day and the trivia of life are not welcome.

In China, there is no shortage of microblogs as an effective way.

Social media is a great opportunity to build your personal brand. Use the web to share your passion and knowledge.

All platforms are updated simultaneously

When it comes to a brand, the first thing that comes to mind may be a specific logo, slogan or picture. The same applies to personal brands.

Make sure you use the same profile and avatar across all platforms and websites. I made the mistake of using different avatars on media sites and Twitter. The first time people see these two different heads, they don’t immediately know it’s the same person. Your goal is to get more people to know you and build your personal brand, so it’s best not to have multiple avatars and usernames on different platforms. Remember to use the same personal information.

As a developer

Even if you’re a budding software developer, don’t shut out job offers. Your blog and social media accounts are a showcase for who you are, and can identify you as an “aspiring developer” or “developer with professional training.”

Will hiring managers be interested in passionate developers who don’t have a lot of real experience? Of course, enthusiasm is an important qualification for recruitment.

Even if you already have a stable job in another industry and are teaching yourself programming skills at night, you can still be called a “developer” (they do their job during the day and write code at night).

There are many ways to assess the level of development. However, the first impression is the amount of code, so do as much coding as you can.

As a developer looking for a development job, make sure you’re a qualified developer.

Remove the “elementary” label

I suddenly realized that I refer to myself as a “junior” developer on my blog and social media. In fact, I’m 30 years old, so I’m not at the primary level.

To be honest, just using the word “beginner” to judge the level of a developer is meaningless. It depends on your perspective. A junior developer may be someone with little or no work experience. But what if that person has been writing code in his free time for the past decade? Is he still at an entry-level level? Or maybe someone has a few years of business development experience, but the real level is not high?

Realistically, don’t call yourself a junior developer. This won’t do you any good and will limit your employment potential. Is there a company or employer that indicates in a job advertisement that an intermediate developer would actually consider “junior”?

You don’t want them to say, “Wait a minute, you meet all our requirements and have several years of experience. But sorry, we’re not looking for a junior developer.”

Highlight your areas of expertise

On my blog and social media, I call myself a “Web developer.” Indeed, I primarily use a range of Web technologies to develop Web applications. Technically, I’m a PHP developer.

I’m not very proficient in JavaScript, so I won’t have an easy time getting a job as a JavaScript developer. Also, my Ruby on Rails is a bit lame, and to be honest IT only took me about an hour to learn its tutorial. So I decided to build my personal brand as a PHP developer. This is a more accurate way to showcase my skills and expertise.

To get a better chance, you need to highlight what you’re best at.

My blog logo

Clean up your Github

A colleague was browsing my Github a while back and was shocked at how active I was on the site in my spare time.

Then he found out that my projects were almost always half-finished, disorganized and “WIP” (in progress), and he got a bad impression of me. Indeed, too many of these projects fail to showcase themselves as developers who submit frequently, deliver on time, and follow through on a project.

It’s good to be active on GitHub, but if you’re never going to finish these projects, I suggest deleting them. Recruiters want to look at completed projects that you’re most proud of, not projects that you think are meaningful but haven’t put in the time.

Show your passion

Use blogs, social media, GitHub, and online platforms to emphasize your love of development. Be as proud of your projects and passion as you can.

At this point, I quote from two programmers on Stack-overflow: Passion vs. experience.

Developers who are passionate about development are worth hiring, even if they don’t have the experience. A passionate programmer learns quickly, immerses himself in his work, and loves development. I’ve worked with multiple programmers of both types, and I’ll always hire passionate programmers over experienced ones.

People who don’t care about the progress of their work also don’t care about the quality of their work.

If you have the resources to train new developers, then surely you should

Hire passionate programmers.