How Do I Stand Out?
Grow your Portfolio. Nurture your Network.
My visit to Virginia Tech last April included many conversations with students. And, surprising to absolutely no one, the #1 question that students asked me was, "When trying to get a job, how do I stand out?" Each time I was asked, I answered as best I could in the time that I had with that student. But I found myself wishing I already had my substack in place, because this was definitely one of my "No Repeats" situations.
If I reflect on my passion for writing stuff down and leaving a paper trail1, the root motivation for this drive is efficiency. Efficiency, to me, is a combination of the "work yourself out of a job" and the "don't do the same task twice" mindsets. Combining those two, you can see that my desire to write stuff down is all about me trying to pass on what I've learned in a scalable way, where I'm not repeating myself.
My point isn't that people are predictable and I know all the questions they're going to ask, as well as have all the answers. My main motivation behind capturing as much as possible in written form is to maximize efficiency, to increase the rate of our collective evolution.
In a mentoring relationship, the quicker that the mentor and mentee can "cut to the chase" of the specific situation to discuss, the better. I'm not mentoring the world, I'm mentoring one individual. So I want to spend as much time as possible talking about that individual's unique lived experience. To that end, I don't want to waste time regurgitating general philosophy. So I'll give a tease and drop a link for one of my posts. And then we'll move on.
My "No Repeats" rule is: anytime I answer the same question three times, it's time for me to write it down. So here is my full response to the Computer Science student who asks, "How do I stand out?" Probably 80% of this applies to any student asking this question, but there is 20% that is very CS-specific.
A Very Different Environment
The field of Computer Science has changed instantly and dramatically with the widespread pursuit of AI. We went from having more than enough work to go around, to a feeling that maybe we don't. I regularly pushback on the "AI will obsolete the coder" position. Obsolete is a strong word, and that's exactly what I take issue with. There is no shortage of videos and articles that show the limitations of AI as coder. Yes, it will get better. No, it won't completely replace the coder … or the designer … or the product manager. But with all the uncertainty around the potential of AI, and with the rate of change with AI, many (most?) companies are slowing hiring of CS grads, waiting for the dust to settle on this.
The big tech companies that have AI-powered search engines (Microsoft, Google, Meta, et al) are also laying off engineers as a funding trade-off, because they have to pay for compute. Where a traditional search query cost these companies some very small amount of money, the cost for an AI query is ten thousand times that cost. And, behind all these queries, the companies are racing to build the best AI, which requires a huge amount of compute cost. I have never seen this before in the CS field, where companies are lowering their headcount in order to cover compute costs. The only way that this trend can stop is if someone figures out how to monetize it, or if the company decides to scale down their investment in this race.
So with AI uncertainty slowing hiring, and with big tech companies downsizing, the challenge for the CS applicant is that there are now many more individuals competing for the fewer job openings in the market. Further, the more junior roles are what there are fewer and fewer of, as the general thinking is that the jobs that AI will replace will start with junior CS role and then, as it gets more sophisticated, will start to displace more senior CS roles.
Forbes article "AI won't replace you. A human using AI will"2 has the perfect title. Your focus here should be, as it always was, to make coding just the beginning of your CS pursuit. You need to uplevel your approach. Dive into software design, systems thinking, managing an AI team, and technical communication (so that you can most precisely communicate with AI team members).
Forbes says, "According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, nearly 40% of skills in today’s jobs will be disrupted by 2030. But look closer at what’s rising to the top of the global skills agenda: analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility, leadership, and curiosity. In short, soft skills." (bolding mine)
What are AI's strengths, and what are its limitations? Where and how can AI accelerate your efforts? Use AI as a tool, and use it in such a way that you sharpen your critical thinking.3
Dehumanized Screening
The above sea change leads to a higher number of candidates for each job posting. A year ago, I was seeing at least 10x the number of applicants as two years earlier (e.g. 300 applicants for postings that had typically drawn 30). I imagine that number is higher now. This results in recruiters and hiring managers being inundated with applicants, and having to turn to AI solutions to help the screening process.
Before the AI groundswell, there was already the growing trend of applicants not sending the same resume for 10 different job openings, but instead sending a tailored resume for each opening. Tools that help you shape your resume to better match the job description specifics have become the norm. It's not so much about "gaming the system" at this point. Rather, it's just considered "table stakes" because everyone is doing it.
Combining these two, it's AI-aided inputs into the system and AI-aided screening through the system. The percentage of applications that are actually seen by a human have dropped dramatically. With this increasingly dehumanized screening, the remedy is decidedly human.
Now more than ever: Networking
Hiring managers are getting worn out by the hiring process. A person connected with them that shares a high confidence candidate breaks through the machinery, and gets more attention. So how do you put yourself in a position of being that candidate known by someone close enough to the hiring manager? You focus on building a broad and deep network.
Your network is not powered by people that can vouch for you being a nice person. It's powered by people that can be your advocates. An advocate has seen your work and can give a recommendation that describes the quality of your work and how you work.
Step 1: What is your online presence? If you're not already on LinkedIn, start there. Immediately. And then regularly revisit your profile page and hone it to be your elevator pitch.
Step 2: How deep is your online presence? Do you have a coding or design portfolio (github or otherwise)? You need one. And it should capture all of the different work that you have taken on, the more outside of assigned coursework, the better. (We'll talk a bit more about this later.)
Step 3: Start connecting. This will be a slow and ongoing process, so the sooner you start, the better. When I think about a network, the fitting quote that comes to mind is, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." It can feel insurmountable to be starting from zero and thinking about all that is involved in getting enough people to know you well enough to help you stand out to the right team at the right time. So keep this tree analogy in mind, and just start driving forward … now.
Your Portfolio
When I was interviewing candidates, the three key attributes that I looked for were:
Curiosity - Forbes included this in their soft skills list above. It tops the list for me. Being curious sets you up for seeing challenges as opportunities for growth. If you're in an interview, and someone poses a problem to you that you've never heard before, are you scared because the answer isn't obvious or are you excited because your worldview is about to grow?
Team Player - Colleges are giving more and more group assignments, which is good. And you need to look for opportunities to get more of that. It is far less about what you can accomplish on your own and more about what you can bring to a team environment to contribute to the momentum4 and the output of a group of people. Being a star player is secondary to being a force multiplier.
Initiative - What is your demonstrated interest in the field beyond the coursework you've been assigned? Did you major in Computer Science to get a big paycheck, or did you pursue it because you saw opportunity to add value? You show your passion for the field by proactively making space in your calendar to take on work that piques your curiosity.
Build your portfolio of work so that it showcases all three of these attributes.
Crawl: Hackathons - Hackathons are a great place to start building this muscle. Do a few of these to get comfortable with the free-flowing nature and ad hoc organization.
Walk: Open source exposure - Go to your open source platform of choice (e.g. github, gitlab, sourceforge) and look for beginner-friendly repositories. The key tags here are "good first issue" and "help wanted". This can be coding, documentation, debugging, fixing, testing, or designing. Try anything and everything. You're learning how to work asynchronously with a potentially larger pool of engineers.
Run: Open source commitment - Now turn your attention to deeper work on longer-lived open source projects. In the walk stage, you will have connected to many different engineers. Where did you find a good fit, and felt most energized by the work being done and the people doing it? Connect with them on the repository and move into more of a leadership role. Rather than just taking on the tagged issues, drive more of the project conversation to generate new ideas. And then follow through to productize those ideas.
All the while that you're advancing through the above progression, you are building your portfolio, you are demonstrating all three attributes, and you are deepening your network of advocates.
Happy to Help
Want to work on your networking? Connect with me on LinkedIn and let's dive deeper into your own journey.
On the Teamwork front and interesting resource I've just recently become familiar with is Pat Lencioni's (5 Dysfunctions of a team) latest 6 Types of Working Genius. It outlines the key aspects of getting *anything* done in a team setting, super useful to helping someone contribute to and leverage the work of others!