A first-time recruiter’s MOSTLY-UNCENSORED TELL-ALL from PyCon US
After years of talking to recruiters, in April 2023, I got my first experience on the other side of the table. I attended PyCon US with our recruiting team and folks? I’m about to spill all the secrets I learned on the inside. Whether you’re going to a conference to recruit, be recruited, or to learn, speak, or chat, you can’t miss these hot tips they don’t want you to know!*
*they are neutral on whether or not you know these tips
SHOCKING: THE USUAL ADVICE IS GOOD (but not for the reasons you think!)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard the advice for going to a conference. A cursory search turns up tips from an official PyCon blog, a major tutorial site, and even one of the 2023 keynote speakers. And the advice is great, if a bit obvious. After all, who wouldn’t know to look at the schedule ahead of time, bring a bottle of water, and socialize during downtime?
You, turns out! Or at least a version of you who’s tired, hungry, dehydrated, over- or under-caffeinated, overwhelmed, in the wrong time zone, and/or out of cell service or battery power. Researching talks, planning a schedule, and even finding a few worthwhile restaurants near the venue will take effort off of you when you’re not operating at your best.
Similarly, there’s a lot of advice geared around networking, both professional and private. Again, conventional logic is that this is obvious, that half the reason to go to these conferences is to schmooze with other people in your field and do “professional advancement.”
Kind of right, mostly wrong: the actual reason to do this is that you can walk up to anyone and say: “Hey! Tell me about a cool thing you’re working on.” and the other person will be excited to answer. This is a level of openness and approachability you’re unlikely to find elsewhere, and if it goes wrong, there are thousands of other opportunities to hone your social skills and hear about cool projects.
WOAH: RECRUITING IS HARD (and you can game that system!)
This may be surprising to hear, but recruiting and engineering are very different jobs.
Recovered from the surprise? Lemme hit you with the next one: they’re both difficult and being good at one doesn’t make you good at another.
As someone who’s always spoken to recruiters, I never appreciated how many first impressions you make and have to make well. Do you think that you can accurately and quickly sum up what your company does to a potential hire? I thought I did, and I was wrong! It took me days to find a quick and accurate summary that kept people interested.
This means that you do not have to be nervous when you talk to a tech recruiter. Like ever. Our concern is not whether you’re good enough, but whether we’re doing a good job communicating. We want to talk to you, regardless of skill level or where you are in your career.
Asking questions is also a great way to get us interested in you. Simply put, it helps us know what you want to hear. I could talk about HENNGE, my day-to-day work, the internship program, or life in Tokyo, but some of that will be relevant, and some won’t. Questions fill me in on where to take the conversation.
Finally, following up is massively underrated. I spoke with a few hundred people over the course of the weekend, and one person followed up. Unsurprisingly, his name is the only one I remember, and when he visited Japan we made sure to set up a visit to HENNGE HQ. All because we exchanged contact info! Following up is low-hanging fruit if you’re looking to up your networking game, so ask for a business card or LinkedIn handle next time you’re talking to a recruiter. One email can make you stand out from the crowd.
WHAT??? GETTING X% OF THE BENEFIT WITH Y% OF THE WORK? (note to self-add estimates later, make X pretty big and Y pretty small)
If I’ve done my job right, you’re now fired up to go to the next PyCon. Bad news, it’s probably far away from you in both space and time. Bummer. But the coolest parts of the convention are available to you right now!
For instance, you can watch the talks on YouTube for this and other PyCons! For free!! And it might even be better than the in-person experience…?
I know, I know, that’s blasphemy! But even good talks can sometimes use a pause button, and talks you discover aren’t for you are easier to back out of.
Further, lots of those talks include the speaker’s Mastodon or Twitter handles; you can simulate running into a speaker in the hallway by reaching out. Tell them you liked their talk! Ask a follow-up question! Keep it chill, and you get to make someone feel like they’re a minor celebrity.
Other experiences, like taking part in open space events or talking to randos in the hallway, are a little tougher, I’ll admit…
Just kidding, the world is full of cool people who like working together! If you’re reading this from a big city, try looking for a maker- or hackerspace in your area. Searching “<city name> Python” gets you shockingly far in terms of finding Python enthusiast groups. If you aren’t lucky enough to live near a formal group, try looking for coding outreach programs, local classes, or, hell, start your own! If nothing else, you can try joining an open source project and make the coding world a better place.
I also loved talking to other recruiters as a recruiter; neither of us expected to gain or lose a prospective hire, so we could skip straight to the stuff we cared about. Great news, you can do that from home too! All the companies that attend PyCon have outreach and social media employees who’d love to hear from you. LinkedIn isn’t just for posting fictional stories about giving one of your Lamborghinis to charity; try sliding into some corporate DMs. If you’re curious about what a company does, there’s someone on the other end whose job it is to answer that curiosity — especially if you’re explicit about whether or not you’re looking for a job!
You can open a new tab and start replicating the PyCon experience, and you don’t even need to fly 14+ hours to Utah to do it! The world is truly incredible.
But please continue reading to the end; I need my reading engagement stats to stay up.
DOES THE P IN PYCON REALLY STAND FOR “PEOPLE”???? (No, obviously not. But they are important!)
It was a point that came up in talks, events, and even the reason I went to PyCon in the first place: people are cool, and interpersonal connections are powerful and worthwhile.
It can be challenging to meet and connect with people, but doing so is worth the effort. If you need a citation for that, my company did the math and concluded that it was worth sending a handful of people halfway around the world if it meant bringing in people who are talented and interested in what we do.
It was a huge motivator for me to keep working hard so that I could be one of those people who adds to discussions and projects, just like so many of the folks I met at the conference.
Many thanks to the recruiting team for supporting me while I was learning the ropes, the speakers and volunteers for sharing their passions, and the countless people who make up the community.
Like my writing but wish it had more illustrations and also was about dragons? Check out my children’s book at afraidalot.com.
Like my writing but wish we were coworkers? Check out HENNGE’s Global Internship Program at https://recruit.hennge.com/en/internship/.
