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This is FiveMinuteFriday, Get a Headhunter.
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Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast everybody, super excited to have you back here on the show. Today I’ve got a killer tip for you, for your career, regardless of what level you are, regardless of how happy or unhappy with your job you are. If you’re searching or not searching, whatever the current state of your career is, this is a fantastic tip to incorporate for absolutely everybody.
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So I was advising a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine who’s decided to move out of academia and into the world of data science in business, either in industry or in consulting. And he’s one of the most brilliant, talented people I know, and super switched on, has had massive success in academia and just decided to now try out the world of business and industry. And he was thinking about how do I get started? How do I get started at a good company with a good salary? How do I not jump at the very first job that comes my way, which is very tempting? How do I find the right career for myself?
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And through the brainstorming session that we had, I realized that one of the best things a person in that position, or in any position, regardless of where you are in your career, one of the best things that you can do is you can delegate that responsibility to somebody else. Effectively, you can just go and find yourself some recruiters or some headhunters or both, who are hungry for talent, who actually get paid when they hire the right people. Think about it. If a recruiter or a headhunter puts you in a position where you’re getting a decent remuneration, they’re going to get a percentage. Usually it’s like about 10% or 20% of your annual salary. So if you’re getting 100,000 a year, they’ll get 10 to $20,000 for just placing you. So they’re constantly looking out for talented people to put into these positions. All you have to do is find them.
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It’s like reverse a hiring or reverse looking for a job. Rather than them coming to you and scouting you, why don’t you go to them? But the caveat here is, you have to have something to go to them with. So if you’ve been following with his podcast and our career advice and career advice that guests on the podcast have given, and you’ve been implementing that, then by now you probably have a portfolio of projects. If you don’t, do something to get onto first. Fix your LinkedIn and get a portfolio of projects, whether it’s on Tableau public if you’re more into visualization or on GitHub, or you’re sharing some articles on Medium, some articles on your LinkedIn, some case studies, some walkthroughs. All this stuff should exist online so that when you go to a head hunter, you can say, “Hey so and so, I noticed you’re a headhunter in the space of data science and analytics in the city I’m interested in working or in this area, in this geographic area or in these industries.” They usually have specializations geographically or specific interests and things like that. But you’re interested in specifically at data science and analytics headhunter or recruiter in the industry or geography where you’re sitting.
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So you’d say, “So and so, I noticed you do head hunting, recruiting. I just wanted to effectively save you some time. I’m your candidate. I can do this, this, this, this. I specialize in Python or Tableau or whatever it is, Power BI, R programming. I can build machine learning algorithms, this kind. I’m interested in this specific industry. I’m very good at deep neural nets. I don’t have too much experience. Only maybe one year or zero years on the job, but at the same time I’ve done all these projects. You can see five portfolio examples on this website, on GitHub. I’ve shared this. I’ve volunteered and provided some machine learning advice on this platform and things like that.” So basically you describe yourself. You show everything that exists online, that’s verifiable information. Boom, you have an advocate. You have somebody who’s going to go out there and pitch you to other companies.
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And if you get two, three, maybe five people like that on your side, you have a team where you can’t lose. Basically what you want to do is you want to be in a position where these jobs are coming to you. This was my advice to my friend. You want to be in a position of power. You don’t want to be hunting and scavenging for these jobs and hoping you get something. You want to be in a position where you can say no to these jobs. And especially if you’re happy with your job. You just get in touch with a recruiter. Don’t say that you’re looking for a job. To be honest, just say, “I’m not looking for a job right now, but I wanted to network with you, catch up so that we’re up to speed.” You never know what will come. You never know when the right opportunity will come up. So create this for yourself.
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But yeah, you have to have either a ton of work experience for them to be interested, or a ton of verifiable demonstrated skills that are easily verifiable online. And then you have all these headhunters working for you, working effectively for free. You don’t have to pay them because the companies will pay them. The companies that will hire you. Bulletproof strategy. Looking back at my career, that’s exactly… It just hit me a few days ago when I was thinking about this FiveMinuteFriday episode, that’s actually how I got my job after Deloitte. I started putting information out there. A headhunter visited my… A recruiter visited my LinkedIn profile. I messaged them. They didn’t say anything, but I messaged them, “Hey, I noticed you were on my profile. Was there something I can help you with?” And then we got to talking. Eventually he found me the job. Boom. I didn’t have to pay him a dime. That’s just how the industry works.
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So look out for it. That’s a tip. Hopefully you can incorporate it. Again. I think anybody at any level, regardless of how satisfied you are with your work and so on, should do that. But there are some things you need, prerequisites. So if you haven’t put in the work first, create your online portfolio and things like that, then go reach out to head hunters, recruiters. Just have them in your network if you’re not looking right now. If you are looking right now, this will save you a lot of time, and if you truly stand out in the data science crowd, this will get you those job offers coming. All right, hope you enjoyed this podcast and I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.
