How Samantha Ming lands developer jobs without applying
Published: 2020-11-17 19:04:26

Samantha Ming got her first developer job in 2016 (without ever getting a CS degree).

Today she’s a Front End Developer at GitLab fast-tracking her way to becoming a Senior Developer.

Here are the insights behind her career growth success.

When you dig into Samantha’s magic, you’ll see she’s fully optimized her LinkedIn.

Step 1? Keywords.

A recruiter might be looking for a Javascript developer. If you don’t have the word Javascript in your profile, forget it, they won’t find you.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/6d95gvukevgg0gx0pt0u.png)

Samantha also ensures she's toggled on the right settings in LinkedIn.

Here's her set up.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/vh5kqxvjm10fiko6lx7x.png)

A few months ago Samantha had a friend let her know his company was hiring. 

Why? 

He said he’d seen some of her posts on LinkedIn and thought she’d be a good fit.

The more you share on LinkedIn, the better chance you have of opportunities FINDING YOU.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/u0doqnghadbl1unxf4kl.png)

Samantha's other superpower is simple – being kind & friendly.

When she was looking for a job a friend advocated for her & she immediately got an interview.

Other developers are your best resource to get a job. If you’re kind you can easily ask for a referral.

So don’t be a jerk!

Here are email templates you can use to ask for a referral.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/im1hvbq1crnx4oqhkzl5.png)

Now, networking and LinkedIn may help you get an interview, but acing the interview and algorithm will land you the job

Here are Samantha’s tips on whiteboard questions and take-home challenges.

In whiteboard challenges, you can’t use Google. 

So Samantha actually treats the interviewer as Google.

Forget a method name? She’d just ask.

Interviewers want to see your thought process, not that you memorized the syntax.

Speak your process aloud. Even if you get stuck.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/8cljdbhxmx2qcqmkm56b.png)

Take-home challenges always have a time limit, so speed is the game!

Samantha figured out the biggest time saver is optimizing her set up time.

The faster she could set up her dev environment, the more time she had to actually tackle the challenge.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/l1epou4d707breoiwkjq.png)

And lastly, the culture interview... 

So what makes a person a cultural fit? In Samantha's words:

'It means you’re not an asshole! That’s it!' 

lol

In the end, people want to know you’re someone they'll LIKE working with.

Kindness, positivity, empathy are the winning formula for landing a job.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/5ucf2ejqxeq32u93qllz.png)

To summarize! 

Samantha’s success landing jobs stems from:

1/ Being kind & friendly, sharing her successes, and optimizing her LinkedIn to create serendipitous opportunities.

2/ Preparing for the interview thru simple tactics to help her land the job.

Simple.

Ok, thanks for reading!

If you'd like to learn more from Samantha, she's killing it on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/samantha_ming) and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/samanthaming/),and here’s her [site](http://samanthaming.com) too.

If you learned something and are feeling generous perhaps show some love to the [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/aboutusdev/status/1328771673223380992?s=20). 

I work a full-time job while creating these articles on the side, so this really helps.
 
Till next time!  –Ryland