Selling yourself

Question

How do you guys sell yourselves, and how do you recommend juniors sell themselves?

Like how are you actually supposed to sell your impact if you aren't sure of it, or if you're a small potato impacting other small potatoes?

I read some resumes out there and I think to myself "what the heeeeeeeck where did they get that 25% from?"

For context, I've been doing basic web dev for sometime. WordPress sites where I just go all in with the CSS and install some plugins. I was usually more interested in making a website for my side hustle or favorite cafe than I was being a dev if that makes sense.

Then last year I had a survey programming job that lasted a year. So programming market research surveys that people get paid to take. Lots of Python for data validation, more CSS, HTML/XML, and some JavaScript.

A lot of really basic stuff. I am actively learning - so DS&A, OOP, Flask, using git and GitHub, etc. But like, what are some tips some of you who have been around the block could provide to juniors who might not have developed a button for Google that was clicked on by 5 million people? How can we better think about impact and useful metrics you might be looking for when thinking of new hires?

konpeki · Accepted Answer

Maybe try to think about non quantitative data/metrics.

So for your Survey Programming job, if you weren't doing that work, what's the alternative? They send surveys and collect responses through Google Sheets and then have to manually validate everything, etc. etc.?

If that's the case, then your survey programming streamlined data collection, resulting in less manual work for collection and validation. You can think about how much time is being saved from doing all the manual work.

Harryliu · Answer

Link what you do with the impact: ask product manager and business stakeholder: why we do this project? Why we do this feature? What audience we are helping? What metrics can tell us, it really helped as we are hoping for? And observe the metrics before and after the feature go live.

buckt · Answer

As stated, link to the business value, and then expand on that with basic telemetry. If you can’t tie to the revenue and value, tie into what is at stake if you fuck it up.Question I’d ask: “What’s the average cost of these surveys?”(what people got paid for them)Say that was 50$. Basic telemetry/ log data gives you the number of surveys (1,000 of your surveys were sent out), and you can make some claim like “coded validations to ensure quality data collection on $50,000 in customer  surveys.”That money would have been wasted if you sucked at your job and people put in nonsense. Don’t overlook what you saved as well.

Googo · Answer

You got a few options:1) just ask how it impacted the business2) determine how your code has directly impacted a specific product and what that product does or did3) make sure you define SMART goals which can then be used as metrics

Selling yourself

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