How to build a Great Profile - Growth Mindset - Season 2 Ep. 1

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grow stronger each day. For more information, visit us at csharpcorner.com. Good morning and welcome back to the Growth Mindset Weekly Live Show

My name is Mahesh Chan. I'm founder of C Sharp Corner. As some of you who are joining us today, if you are joining us back, you may already know that we do this show every Friday, noon, Eastern Time

If you are joining us first time, welcome to the show. In this show, growth mindset is all a little bit different, even though this show focusing on, you know, for software developers, but our focus is more about growth, personal and professional growth

and that's really what we talk about here. This show is for you

It's not for us. It's not for me. So make sure you ask your questions

It can be any kind of questions. You have questions about your job, career, community

anything about, you know, you can even ask questions about C Sharp Corner

ask questions about, you know, pandemic, anything happening around there. so feel free to post comments on you know on your chat and I see people are

joining from YouTube Facebook Twitter Twitch welcome to the show just yeah put

your questions let your questions fly and then we will answer questions the

show this show has a format in first part of the show we talked to we have a

guest every week and we talk to guests and then in the second half we take your

questions. Let's start with my presentation. So this hit next Simon. On this show we

We are actually, we have a guest, Dave. Dave is a good friend

All right, what are you doing, Simon? Just go stay on the first page. Yeah

So anyway, welcome back to the show. I'm a little lost with the presentation, but we'll get this right

Today's show is season two. You know, we are breaking down this into season two

And season two is focusing on success-driven mindset. So our focus will be success

success of you your success anybody who's watching this show uh and today's our focus will be how to

build a a killer profile which means your resume or online profile or you know anything you're

trying to go out there or how to believe in your you know profile even just on social media so we

are going to talk about that um um as you may already know if you are joining us from different

parts of the world. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. I see more people joining in

So in this show, we talk about growth mindset, but we also focus on making sure we answer your

questions. If you think any of your friends, co-workers, family, anybody can benefit from this

show let them know it's live every every week friday also please please please post on your

social media share it with your uh your network so we want to you know so to grow more and may

so more people can benefit from it uh we before we start the show let's talk about we have some

upcoming shows and conferences. If you are not familiar on C Sharp Corner, it's csharp.live. We

do show every almost every day now on different topics. Check out csharp.live to see the list of

shows. We also have upcoming conferences this month and next month. We have great conferences

coming up. So if you look at this, there's a website we have called 202020.net where you can

go and look at all these conferences. All these conferences are free. All these conferences are

like last year in 2020 we end up doing 20 virtual conferences. As you can see we just finished three

conferences. We did on SQL Server virtual conference, we did Fullstack, we did Power Platform

Now we also did a Growth Mindset conference. Now we have a couple of more conferences coming up on

public speaking this is on april 9th in this what we are going to cover is how to become a public

speaker and then we have iot virtual conference coming so we have two conference coming in april

and then we have more conference coming coming up in following month so check out this page

uh 2020.net for to learn more about these conferences on each conference also we we raise

money for different charity um so you can also go check out with charity is it and if you are

willing you can just try to donate um as much as you can uh that's our goal with these conference

we are raising awareness and we are raising money for these different um charities

um tomorrow this is a good news right here tomorrow we are launching a new show called

C Sharp Corner Town Hall. Me and Simon, we have been talking about this show for a while now

but the purpose of C Sharp Corner Town Hall is we are going to cover the weekly news on C Sharp

Corner, mostly tech news, mostly software development news. So if you are, you know

you want to learn what happened this week in software development, this is the show

you don want to miss in the show we also going to talk about on C sharp Corner platform we are launching several new features And I think in coming this 20 rest of 2021 every month or two

we are going to announce something major. We've been building these products and these features

for a long time. Now we are going to start announcing them. In this, we're also going

to cover those features. We're also going to talk about in the C-Sharp Corner Town Hall show

what are we working on now? So if you want to come, join

us, ask your questions, give feedback. Just come tomorrow. It's 10 a.m

10 a.m. Eastern, like two hours. You know, right now it's noon in Eastern time

So if you're not sure, it's two hours before this time. So please, I'm looking forward to

joining you tomorrow here with me and Simon will be here. talking about C-Sharp Corner platform features

Next, by the way, we are hiring. C-Sharp Corner is hiring. We are growing

Our team is growing because we need to build more of these features. We are going slow

If you are a C-Sharp developer, we are hiring young developers. You have to be energetic

We are hiring C-Sharp and .node core developers. We are hiring Azure architects and DevOps engineers

We are also hiring blockchain developers as well and we are looking for one or two community managers

Community managers, their role will be to work with us on these shows, news and other things

For this community manager role, you don't have to be technical. However, you will be, you probably is most likely to work with me and Simon and a couple

of other folks and probably also go on live show like live TV like this

So these are our upcoming hirings. If you also you know somebody who's looking for a job, please feel free to let them know

and contact us on either social media or C-sharp corner or anywhere you can find us

Now let's talk about today's show. Today's show is we have a guest Dave

Dave is a good friend. He's also a managing partner at Tengen Solutions

Tengen Solutions is a South Africa-based company. They build software and solutions, and we're going to talk more about Dave on that

He's also Microsoft Regional Director. That's how I met Dave a few years back in one of the Regional Director Summits

And he's an entrepreneur from Johannesburg, South Africa. So let's invite our today's guest, Dave

Welcome to the show. Hey, Dave. How's it? Yeah, very well. Thanks

Very well. All right. Long time no see. How's everything there in South Africa

Yeah, no, it's going all right. We're coming out of the COVID, which is always a pleasure

And, yeah, business is picking up again and people are beginning to return to their lives

Weather's beautiful. Can't complain. That's great. That's great. So did you get vaccine there yet

How's the situation there, COVID situation? We're a bit behind on the vaccine curve

Honestly, I'm only expecting to get it towards the end of the year. So they're rolling out now to the frontline workers

But there's many more needy people than a healthy young male or middle-aged male, to be honest

So the advantages, South Africa is a beautiful country. So, you know, if we're stuck here, it's not the worst place in the world to be stuck

Yeah, hey, you know, and I plan to visit there sometime, hopefully in near future

So, no, I mean, in the U.S. here, I'm in Philadelphia. COVID situation is still not, you know, it's not, it's still bad

It's not under control yet. Actually, my son, he went to play basketball in Florida

He came back on Monday. He's COVID positive. Yeah, so in my house now we have COVID

So he's in his room kind of quarantining and I'm trying to stay safe here

Well, hey, this is how it is. We'll go, we'll get over this soon, hopefully

Hopefully things will get better. You got an Xbox and you're passing him pizzas under the door

That's it. That's it. We have Xbox and pizzas being delivered every day

And, you know, through that, that's what's happening right now. I don't think he's complaining too much

Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. All right. So Dave, on this show, you know, growth mindset. So we launched last year. It's going well. We have people come in. The first format is first half next 20, 15 to 20 minutes. We'll talk about you and your tips and what you do. And then second half, we will also try to take some questions from our viewers. So anybody who's watching, just join in. Welcome to the growth mindset. So this is Amman Mahesh Chan, founder of C Sharp Corner

Today we have Dave Nelk. He is a managing partner at Tangent Solutions. He's also Microsoft Regional Director from South Africa. Feel free to post your questions here in comments. So we will be taking your questions in the second half

So Dave, tell me a little bit about your company. I think first thing about like what made you start your own company

How did you get into this? How are there ups and downs when you start any of your business

It's really, it's not that easy. It's not like, okay, flip a button, leave your job that's paying well and then you just

go with it. What made you start this company a little bit about when did you start it

Why did you start it? and how the things are going, you know, since you started now

So myself and a good friend of mine, Ian Roberts, I'd been, was at my second job

I'd been previously working in Cape Town. I moved up to Johannesburg to, so I could do my masters

And yeah, Ian was a quite an entrepreneurial guy. He'd been building websites since he was in

university and selling the website and he needed some technical support and over the years him and

I just sort of started working together and it built its own momentum I mean I'd moved on a

couple of times from from company to company and I just wasn't finding my place you know the world

wasn't quite feeling right for me and you know all in the while while I was getting some really

good consulting experience you know this little business was just growing up and one day we got

a nice opportunity and Ian and I had a good sit down and said you know this is something we can

really do and yeah that's how we started first year in a little dinky room sort of three by two

just the two of us and yeah then we hired our first employee one year later and it's been pretty

solid growth since then. Yeah I you know I watch your updates on your social media especially

linkedin looks like you're growing pretty good now you well how big are you now um so we last

year we merged with another company by the name of jiromani um so collectively the company is just

shy of 600 and my division um which is tangent solutions um is about 160 now That pretty good I remember when we met at Microsoft Regional Director Summit

you were small, you were very small. Yeah, no, I mean we've grown quite a bit and we've diversified

nicely. I mean, it's just such an interesting journey. I love the story of how we started

going to cloud. We had no intention to go to cloud. And this was 2010. You know, cloud wasn't

really a thing. And in our first six months of operating in our little dinky office, we were

burgled three times and lost our servers three times. And then we just said, never again will we

have servers and that's how our cloud journey started. So it's just a sort of

crazy twist of events and yeah we've pivoted and journeyed and made some good

choices and some bad but I think we're generally doing the right things right

now. So you were forced to move to cloud? Pretty much which I think is yeah

where everyone is now but no yeah it pretty much that was it we just got

tired of having to worry. And what is quite interesting is that is one of the key things about moving to cloud is

the backup and disaster recovery. Yeah. I have to stress about it

Yeah. Funny thing is in December this year, last year, 2020 December, we've been hosting the

C-sharp corner website platform entire is hosted with RecSpace. and in December we got attacked by this WannaCry where all files were encrypted

and they were asking for Bitcoin and then we were lucky again

We were again then forced to move to Azure and hopefully, you know, this is it

No more, no more, you know, disaster problems and, you know, I must have talked to them. It's been so long and they're like

oh, we can't really do anything about it because backup wasn't successful

and so many other problems. And funny thing is, they're still trying to charge me every month

And I'm still like, this is just a mess. No, it's a crazy situation to be solving

And what at least is quite interesting now is that the fact that our customers and the world

if you look at the positive effects of COVID, if you can possibly say such a terrible time

and terrible event can have positivity, but has been that digitalization and people realizing that critical business events are real things

It's not just some professor standing on a stage talking about risks your company needs to manage

These things are real and businesses need to prepare for them and we as consultants and suppliers need to help them to transform

Yeah, it's just not a business sales pitch like move to cloud, move to cloud

I agree. And yeah, so that's great. And so with your company's growth, sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you have plans, sometimes

you have strategy. What is that if you have to share a couple of your factors that made you grow in the

past couple of three, two, three years? What are those things if you have to mention, share some of them

I think it's the last couple of years, it's been quite an interesting journey because

we've been managing the merger. But I think if I was just to look at that one specifically

it's always to think of people first. And people are at the heart of a business and always focus on that

And if you support the people around you, they will support you in turn

So I think you need to be very conscious of, you know

of handing everything with dignity and sensitivity and then just being conscious of the events around you

I think that's one of the things that differentiates managers and leaders is that empathy for those around them

I think another thing is there's nothing wrong with pivoting and learning

We're going to make some bad choices, and I think the point there is to pivot quickly

and to not be inflated by your own ego. And I think that's a challenging thing that one can be, especially in business and you're succeeding and the world's your oyster

And you can also often see that with your architect level developers where they've kind of reached the pinnacle and everyone's trying to employ them

You get that ego that just says, yeah, I'm generally right most of the time

And I think it's just about keeping yourself humble. and so you recognize your biases and recognize when you're you're failing and you need to make

a turn um and and sometimes you back the wrong horse and that's fine and you you learn a lesson

do a retrospective on it made a bad choice there learned keep going and and you're stronger for

the lesson learned yeah yeah yeah and i think um well well said i think people first i think i like

that definitely if you are a leader you're trying to start your business that's a good point to make

also if you are a senior guy which I you know I dealt that that's one of the reason

you know one of the reasons C sharp corner I start doing my own consulting rather than

working for these companies because you work for these large corporations and there's this guy he's

obviously senior he has experience but he can't get out of his own way he doesn't want to learn

new things he thinks his way is the right way and we get all of us get into that situation from time

to time that well i'm the guy you know i know everything and then i realize that things are

changing so fast because you were doing you know 10 years ago you were building something doesn't

mean it's same thing yeah so be open about learning new things that's the key uh good point here yeah

absolutely and i think that's one of the nice things of the byproducts of the technologies that

that we work with right now is that need for adaptation. And I'm a firm believer that technology doesn't exist in a vacuum

So, you know, technology is culture. Technology brings people change. And, you know, when we move in these fast-paced environments

like the technologies that you speak about in C Sharp Corner, it changes your mindset

You begin to embrace the agility, the transformative approach to doing things

You understand that I don't need to run on servers anymore. I can go to serverless or distributed compute

You begin to experiment. And I think that's what, especially over this difficult period, is that we've seen the businesses that were ready to experiment and to be agile were the ones that succeeded or managed to come out of this difficult time swinging versus the ones that were sitting on their laurels and saying, you know, this is how the world is

were the ones that were beaten and are having to recover. And they're on the back foot now

Yeah, and I think adaptability is the key. And you see even like these days larger corporations you know look at IBM they were the innovators then they lag behind and it trying to catch up with cloud now right um you saw microsoft used to be a

big giant and they pivot and they change a lot in recent years and look at them now right

and i think that i mean that i mean that such as pushed so hard in that transformation was empathy

you know and I think if we were to say you know how do you build your profile

you know it's one thing to have certifications and degrees and all that

stuff but your profile is also the people that you know and having that empathy to your community

and those around you and your customers builds network and makes you as a profile more interesting. Yeah that's great that's great and

And everybody who's joining us, welcome Pradeep, I see Sean joining from Philadelphia, Deepak

joining from India. Welcome everybody joining from different places. We are talking to Malaysia

We got a message from Malaysia. We are talking to Dave here. He runs his own business company in South Africa, Johannesburg, and he's also Microsoft

regional director. in second half we are going to focus more on how to build your profile

This first half we are focusing just talking general. So Dave, I know you are a Microsoft Regional Director

I was a Microsoft Regional Director last year. You want to tell people a little bit on what Microsoft Regional Director is

what they do, and what's the purpose, and what are your benefits also

I think first off, there's no employment association to Microsoft. That's one of the tricky things about the name

But effectively, it is someone who's at a director level in a business in the region

that basically has a relationship with Microsoft within their region, as well as the technical teams

and the culture teams, product teams in Seattle. We are community leaders in our own rights

That means that we actively participate and support community in our regions

You generally tend to be a Microsoft partner or at least a Microsoft partner of some renown as well

And then, yeah, the big point there is to drive the Microsoft messaging around the technologies

obviously from your communities to continue to evangelize it and speak about it because we're

all very passionate about it as well as then to take our insights as business people as entrepreneurs

and as technologists and speak to Microsoft about how we see the world how we experience their

products how our customers experience their products how we experience the partner ecosystem

So it's kind of like an external trusted advisor to Microsoft. And I mean, it's an amazing community of extremely gifted people

You know, yourself, you know, it was such an experience to meet you

And, you know, you constantly wrestle with imposter syndrome, which is, you know, one of the nice things about being in that community

Yeah, I agree, agree. And again, yeah, a lot of people get confused that this is not a full-time job

job you don't get paid for it it's a it's still a similar to microsoft mvp but you know different

kind of uh title and job roles there is um it's just a a a community driven uh kind of role with

microsoft you get to meet a lot of great people you get to talk to a lot of uh amazing people at

Microsoft senior leadership. You know, that's the best part about is that you can go reach out to

anybody and partnerships and also, you know, speaking engagements. And there's a, you know

there's a Microsoft MVP summit coming up this coming week. And I believe there is one day is

dedicated to our regional directors, RDH. Yes, yes. So we tend to have our own little summit

off the back of that and that's a sort of um yeah and when say and you know emphasizes the difference

between um you know regional directors and mvps where uh you know mvp is the depth of technical

uh versus uh an rd is is more of a breadth conversation so so our the rd summit itself

is is both a technical conversation as well as just a world understanding and then business and

partner conversation and sharing those insights and experiences with Microsoft. It's a phenomenal

experience. All right. Yep. Yep. So before we take a break in a few minutes, let me ask one more

question. As your company and yourself, what are the different technologies you are right now

focusing on? One is obviously based on your client needs. That's obviously we have to do

as a business owners. And then besides that, what are you doing your own? Like, okay, this is what

something is probably going to you should bet and you know for the future yeah i think um we're

seeing i mean i know a lot of people have been pushing the the devops thing um i'm i beat that

drum about as loudly as it possibly can be beaten um but it's not just ci cd we've got to go to what

really is devops which is the whole thing the toot and kibbutt so where we're investing is about what

what does that value stream look like? And that's where I'm putting my research right now

Value stream mapping, value stream optimization, change management, and really getting the DevOps

because, in my opinion, without agility, sorry, without DevOps, you don't have agility

It's not even a conversation on the table. And it's data. Now is the time of data as well

I think there's an interesting transition that's happening of technical developers as our ability to deliver compute and applications into the world has sped up

We're generating a lot more data, and the need to understand that data is really tangible

I'm seeing businesses, smallish businesses, that are understanding the fact that their world is made by data

and they need to get the insights into that data. So that's what I'd be making right now is around DevOps, SRE, as well as data ytics and data random

Great, great. So there you go. There you go. So we have, and there's, you know, obviously you said DevOps and I agree

DevOps these days is just not just deploying automatic in cloud. It's really everything like built in the cloud, test in the cloud, deploy in the cloud

different, you know, dev and, you know, and then also run in the cloud, right? And then do all

your diagnostics, logging, feedback, and everything is there. Yeah. No, absolutely. And, you know, and again, it's like I said earlier, that says technology doesn't

exist in a vacuum. So just that nature of running in the cloud and that speed of delivery changes

the way people work, changes the way businesses work. And that's really exciting. I really

enjoy the fact that now that we can back to the business without monitoring. We can give them data that they can make actual

data-driven decisions as opposed to some executive whose left pinky toe is twinkling, and therefore

we are now building this. We can actually say to them, no, that's not what we're building

We're building this because this is what the data says, and this is what's actually going on

I think that's just awesome. All right, great, great. So everybody who's watching this, welcome to the show

Today we're talking about, you know, different things. And now the second half of the show, we are going to talk about how to build your profile as a software developer, as a software professional or any

If you are involved somehow in any way in IT, how do you build your profile

How people see you, where people find you and all that. So we're going to share with I'm here with Dave in second half of the show

We're going to share some of those tips. and if you have any questions just feel free to post in the comment in the second half we are

going to take these comments and answer live as much as we can in the time so we are going to now

take a two-minute break and we will be back in two minutes and i'll see you dave in two minutes cool

covid makes us feel like this and work from home like this

But what if work looked like this? With a leader like this

And a payday that feels like this. Learn how to change your mind and your mindset with the Growth Mindset Show every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern

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www.mindcracker.us to make your dreams into a reality. Hey guys! Can't believe we haven't seen each other since graduation in May. What's going on

Not much. With the pandemic, I can't really do anything right now. Me too. I mostly just stay at home, hang out with my dog, and watch the news

I feel you. Have you guys been able to get jobs yet? Funny that you ask. Gary and I actually have been working on something together

Yeah, we came up with an idea for a startup that's an app that will help us stay active since we both have been sitting around so much during this quarantine

That's genius. I could definitely use something like that. When are you guys launching it

Well, that's the issue. We don't really know how to build it, so we're kind of stuck

I know of this company that does startup advising, if you guys are interested

Oh, really? Yeah, they're called Mindcracker, and they'll help you validate your idea

and connect you with angel investors and help you build everything from your product MVP

to your technical team and even your go-to market planning and execution

Wow, that's awesome. Do you know how we can get in touch with them? Yeah, you can just visit their website, mindcracker.us

That's awesome, May. Thanks. I'm excited to get started on this. Of course. Good luck, guys, and let's talk soon

Thanks, May. All right. We're back here in the Growth Mindset Studio

I'm here with Dave now. Dave is, you know, you're a leader in your own world

You started a company. We're talking about growth mindset. We're talking about how to build a great profile

So let's talk about that a little bit here. Like David, all people who are watching this show are mostly software professionals, right

They may be some are mostly programmers, then some may be in testing, some may be in DevOps, some may be in cloud and so on and so forth

So if they have to build a profile, obviously, what are some of the tips you would like to share

And then I want to break down a little bit those tips and spend more time

so our viewers who are watching us they can benefit from it yeah I think there's I mean the

first thing to build a great profile is well to be able to present a great profile is to have

built a great profile and that really makes that you need to make some investments and some choices

about yourself what you think is is right for you and what you're most passionate in

You know, if you look at what's going on in the online education and how our vendors approach education, there's a lot of ways that one can learn

So in terms of your skill development, you know, one really doesn't have too many excuses not to have an appropriate list of technologies that you can present in a diverse range, as well as the certifications to back those skills

The certifications aren't necessary, but they do help if you're looking at a sort of a quick scan view

So my view is education is an absolute must in any developers or in any technical person's life, regardless of where you're specializing

It's an ongoing journey for technologists today, and we have to stay current

If you're staying current, you're going to have a great profile. it's regardless of you know whether you're picking up pieces of paper along the way

um your technologies will speak for themselves um so yeah i think that's one of the biggest tips

i can give anyone and um you know me as an employer um you know if i pick up a cv and

someone's from saying a good financial institution and if that technology hasn't been moving and that

person's stack is old and there's really no excuse, you pretty much put the story down

pretty quickly. Yeah, that's definitely a great point. So upgrading yourself to the latest stack

is probably learning, right? Learning has to be a part of this. So let's put that a tip number one

is continuous learning. You have to continue learning what's up out there

what's new out there. Now, and yeah, definitely if you can get certified on that

because there's so many online courses there and most of them are actually even free these days

You can go to Azure or AWS and all that and take certifications

There may be a little bit cost here and there, but you can just learn everything there

Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's, you know, one of the things that you want to see is someone

who's passionate, passionate about technology. You know, that inner profile is, it just jumps out at you

If someone doing this just because they putting food on the table which is a fair enough choice But I want to employ the guys that are passionate about technology that want to transform the world And that investment in yourself will speak

It will pop out. And, you know, us as employers and senior people

they're making these decisions. And, you know, if you're looking for investment in your startups

that is visible. It's an incredibly tangible thing on any profile. um you know and i think that that that is one of the biggest things um yeah that kind of adds

a tip number two like you have to be self-starter or motivating motivated yourself right uh that's

kind of pretty much you just added the second tip and i think one question i have is that say you're

working in a company and you're working on an old product or project where your company is not really

upgrading to new, you know, technologies or new, for example, some of the, you know, people may be working in supporting

a big, large project. So how those guys can or girls can get into the learning

new technology, how can they motivate themselves? I think it's one of those things where, you know

if you can have a conversation with yourself and sort of say, this is not what I want to be doing

or then you're going to make those conscious choices to start making change

If you don't have the exposure that's in your workplace, that's fine

You know, go into, you know, any number of sites, C Sharp Corner being a great place and see what people are talking about

See what's going on to online communities. Go to community meetups and just get an understanding of what's going on

and start learning from there and start trying to implement change. I mean, if you want to change yourself

you have to change the things around you as well. So no company is going to particularly have too many complaints if you start bringing unit tests into an environment to make it more resilient

No one's going to say, stop, don't do that. You know, because you're bringing positive change

You're not just standing on a corner, you know, getting onto a chair and saying, you know, I don't want to do this

I want to do something else. You're saying, no, I want to do something else. And this is how it's going to benefit the company

And this is how we're going to do that. And then you're going to get the buy-in. um so so i think there's there's there's always in those situations uh i often say to my guys

in a relationship between an employer and employee there's a push and a pull there's a responsibility

on the side of the employer to make life interesting for the um employee but then there's

also a responsibility on the employee side is to be interested um and uh i remember a few years ago

this one old guy I was talking to said in order to be interesting

interesting, you have to be interested. Good point. That's a powerful point

Yeah, definitely. So tip number three, I think this is good. You just said it

You got to involve in community. If your company is not promoting or helping you or does not have a program

for learning and educating its employees, which happens sometimes, and actually most of the time it happens that company they don't you know have enough programs

for their employees so the way you would do is get involved in community and community these days

you know they're not in person there's so many online communities like we are doing right now

c-sharp corner linkedin microsoft has it there's so many communities out there get involved in any

of those, see what the trends are, what everybody's learning, where the jobs are, start learning

And as you said, if you take that learning and even share with your groups, your teams

and in your company, chances are your company will also recognize you as one of the leaders

And that will kind of also help you not just build your profile

It will also help you move probably higher in the chain. Yeah, absolutely

And I mean, one of the nice community events that we participated in or some of my teams did, it's again, very similar thing

And, you know, as a company, our investment in AI and ML is pretty low right now

And there was a hackathon organized by Microsoft, massive online story. They gave the learning material

They gave sample data for people to learn with. And then they put a nice prize together

And then also, if you couldn't form your own team, you would be put together with other people from across the world to become a team to do an idea

And I mean, that's something that anyone can do. You don't need to be taken there

That's something just being aware of it, watching out for it and participating in good faith and having fun

All right. That's great. So we just learned several trips here. guys if girls you're watching if you have any questions how to get involved in communities how

to build your profile um all that thing just post your questions we're going to start taking

questions once we're done once i'm done with my questions then we take your questions um so

that's great so we just learned that we just learned that okay you got to start learning

learning something new learning what's trending out there you got to get involved with the

community. You've got to also start taking kind of leadership roles in your company

Now let's talk about social media. Social media plays a major role in today's world

I'm sure when you hire anybody, you probably check them online, you look at the LinkedIn

What do you as an employer, as an employer when you are hiring somebody, how impactful is social

media and what do you do with the social media and then my third part will be what these you know

our audience they can learn and do to make their profile better i know it's a long question

it's a very good question i think a lot of people need to realize the importance of social media

both as a tool to build your profile and a risk to destroy destroy your profile at the same time so

So it's a double-edged sword, and I think everyone needs to be aware of that. You know, from a building perspective, what I'd really like to see is guys

where they're participating on having chats about tech, forums that they're interested in, sharing pieces of insight

that they find are interesting. You know, you're really looking for someone, again

who's interested in what's going on around them, but not only interested but has an opinion

um you know it's one thing to um you know just retweet uh or reshare or whatever constantly and

that's great you're sharing content you're making people aware but also where's your opinion in that

um you know did you say anything insightful um you read an article which is maybe on point about

python but you know what you don't necessarily agree with some of those points and you know it's

your opportunity to to add commentary to that and i think by participating more actively you will

also then helped build a profile in that social media world where, um

you're driving the thing that you want to do, which is, is to build a profile and, um

make people see that you're interested in knowledgeable as well. Um, you know

on the other side of things, just, just, uh, exercise caution, you know

the same way I looking for at your social media to see the good things about your interest in your technology you know you know let just keep it clean Yeah so with the keep it clean that important right

because we are people, right, we have a personal preferences, either it's politics or it's a

society or say animals or, you know, whatever it is, that's kind of hard to do. How do you

what advice you give to people who are watching that how do you separate your personal life with

professional life because if I'm employer and I'm hiring I'm going to go check out your Facebook I'm

going to check out your Twitter I'm going to check out your resume I'm going to check out your LinkedIn

and I know people just post anything and everything on some of these platforms

Yeah and I think there's there's the fact that it's you have to recognize that it's a public

platform and once it's out there it's out there and therefore you should exercise some level of

reasonableness. I think we all hope that people are reasonable and decent in general

and I think it's just a case of you know if you're going to participate in conversations that

aren't and shouldn't be spoken about in public one you probably shouldn't be having those

conversations but two is protect your privacy. Privacy is an important part of social media

these days as it is public. But I think it's just a case of, you know

take it as you are speaking in public. It might not seem like you're in public, but you are in public

And, you know, you don't go and scream at someone about their

whether they think a T-shirt is blue or red in public, and therefore you shouldn't be doing it on social media either

Yeah, and I agree. I think I agree. And, you know, I was talking to somebody like this

You're posting online is like your karma. Once it's posted, it's done. You cannot remove it

Somebody is going to have it, some copy somewhere on some server. It's just sitting there

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's one of those things is one of my friends, he's an MVP

who's my works for me, Alistair Pugin. He says the rules of five

So if you're in a conversation and things are getting lively, you know stop and have a pause and say you know if i'm going to say this is would i say the same

thing in five seconds five hours and then five days and if that is true then yes maybe set but

just having that pause to examine yourself uh cools the mind removes the bit of the emotion and

then also sees am i just responding in emotion or if i slow this down can i actually constructively

reply or critically reply as opposed to aggressively or emotionally and that's the sort of stuff you

also want to see if you're looking at a social media you want to see someone that can handle

the pressure isn't going to be toxic when put under pressure because we can be and and you know

as we grow as companies and evolve into more modern companies we really are incredibly conscious of

the cultures that we want and that we believe in and you know if you're losing your cool you know

it's not the type of person that you want in your company because you know everyone deserves to be

treated with respect and dignity even if you don't disagree with them yep good point good point

now you know we know networking plays a major role in profile right and there's a fact in the

u.s there was a research done a study done that 92 percent of people are hired based on their

relationships that's a big number like if you are just sending your resume only eight percent people

are hired without if you don't have a relationship right that's a big number i mean number may change

a little bit here and there but when i was doing a research on it's a 92 people are hired depending

on who you know and that's all about networking so you want to talk about a little bit how important

networking is and what you know people can do to you know build their profile or better network

out there in the professional world? Yeah, no, I think it's, I mean, networking is something

which I believe incredibly strongly. It's done well for me and my personal profile

my personal brand, and business as well. You know, a lot of the business that we get is word of mouth

and I think that just sort of evidences the importance of knowing people and networking

I think one of the biggest things that especially a lot of young people will struggle with is actually just

communicating in general. So it is something that you have to work at. If you are shy

unfortunately, that's not an acceptable excuse anymore. You need to, there's nothing wrong with

being an introvert or being a bit shy and no one's asking you to become aggressive and opinionated

or anything like that. But you have to be in a position that you can voice your opinion

and do so without any concern. So often I say to my young guys, say something. I don't care what

you say. If you're going to talk about the weather, talk about the weather. If you want to talk about cricket, we talk about cricket for 30 seconds, then we get back to the meeting. But at least you've

gone to that practice of actually speaking up. Then you'll find that increasingly you don't mind

speaking. So you will, if you're hesitant of going up to people at community events or going

talking to a more senior person, force yourself to do it. And even if you bungle it, it's fine

You've broken the ice. It will get better and you will get better because you'll get more confidence

and you'll get more practice and you'll understand how to have a conversation

quickly to get a value proposition across, how to keep someone engaged

how to communicate with them. But you have to do it. No one's going to teach you other than, well, you can be taught the skills

obviously, but experience is something that you have to put into effect. And there's small wins, but the trick is to just do it

and put yourself into places where networking can happen. That is community events

That is conferences. That is communities of partner people or of business societies

So, again, find places where you can meet people and then go ask questions

If someone asks an interesting question at a community event, go chat to them

Find out what they're doing, what they're doing in their job, where they're placed and who they're working for

immediately you're gaining interesting information. So, you know, when we say 92% of people are hired because of a relationship

you know, they also are second and third tier relationships. So I might not know Bob directly, but Bob knows Joe and I know Joe very well

And therefore I've got, you know, second tier relationship, which is now in my favor

So, again, it's just about getting out there, speaking, understanding and engaging respectfully

And again, if the more you know, you go back to our first point, which is about knowledge

The more you know, the more you can engage, the more people want to engage with you. So all of these things become a synergistic circle of building your profile as a brand as well as just as a brand really is what you're trying to do

Yeah, yeah. I mean, get your name out there. And I think so. There's two things, you know, I was doing again

I do a lot of reading research and all that. and there is a research done is that when first time some you meet somebody or you talk to somebody or you see somebody

and you trying to either get hired or trying to tell what you are other person is thinking like first thing they think of is can I trust this guy They don look at how great a skill you have

They don't look at how many certifications you have. All they ask question is, can I trust this guy

Because that's the first question every brain thinks of on the other side

And the trust, to me, it comes from, again, building a profile

building out there show what you are and all those combined and how other people are talking

about you right you know you can talk about you how great you are but that's not nobody cares

other people have to actually talk about you how great you are that's how people trust you right

that's so you said it good you know you go i think first thing is communication first thing i like the

you know you have to at least say if you have any questions there's no bad question just ask or talk

about about it right and then that's how you open up and that's how you start with it and then second

point I was going to make was is when you are in public when you are I mean obviously these days

we are not in public but somebody said I think there was a book I read it said that half of

the success is just be there in other words right you know me like I'm saying way in the beginning

of my days I'm like on computer a lot writing code and thinking like work will come to me or

thinking like you know success will come to me but point is success will not come to you have to be

there you have to go there you have to go get there and there's a guy in Philadelphia he wrote

something like you're not going to get anything if you're just sitting on your cars doing whatever

work you think you're doing you have to go out and meet there so and back to your networking is that

you have to go there you have to go meet people you have to make build friendships it's a it's a

investment it's like any other you know same thing with if you are trying to you know young people

all the time coming like oh I did this certification I did I can't find a job so with that and let's

let me go to my next point right now my next point is out of sudden I will get text message or call

or email like I just lost my job. Can you help me? And I tell them, guys, this is like guys and girls

This is not something like a, you know, we get sick, we go to the doctor

And the doctor says, oh, you better start taking care of yourself. Then we start taking care of ourselves

If we start doing exercise and eat good in the beginning, chances are we will not get sick

You want to add something to that, like rather than looking for a job when you lost the job

how they can continue, you know, being still in the discussion of having some jobs lined up to them

No, absolutely. And I think it comes down to, again, is are you moving with the times

Many people become very successful doing very good jobs, very solid jobs

And then you have a critical event. No one could have predicted it. And suddenly the situation that you thought you're going to be retiring in has changed fundamentally

and then you stop and you don't have skills that the market wants to buy

because the company that you were just employed by is gone or they've had to shrink massively

So now you have to start from day zero and you don't even know where to start

So I think it really comes down to always be tradable. If you're always tradable but you're never trading yourself

that's also fine because you are managing that risk. you're also going to be look to be honest if you're continuously investing yourself you're

going to in yourself you're going to be trading yourself upwards in your current company but

always be considered tradable I think is is such an important part you know when one gets to

management levels don't stop and say no I need to I don't need to learn anymore I'm just doing

people or whatever there is endless amounts of management methodologies and people science and

psychological things and methodologies that you should be pursuing and continue to push yourself

in that growth so just because you're out of technical doesn't mean your your your growth

challenges have now stopped you have to keep continuing to investing and also again from

the technical perspective don't just beat the drum of technical if you're a developer do you

know scrum or have you thought about getting a becoming a certified scrum master not only is that

going to be good for your career as a developer because you'll be a better performing developer

if you want to make a fork in your career you've got that choice if a terrible situation happens

like you lose your job as a developer you've got more options available so investing in breadth not

only depth is also quite important um and and that breadth will only add to your career as well

there's no possible way that that sort of investment would ever be wasted

well i didn't even realize we are running out of time so like this is literally two minutes left

this is great i think this is great conversation and probably need more longer discussion on these

topics um so with the last let's just take one more you know we have one more point because

you know we won't have time to even take any questions um i don't think we have too many

anyway. If you have to give one advice to a developer who's a young developer or a senior

or it doesn't matter, what would be the one advice where they can, you know, build a great

profile or even get a better position or job and move up in their current company

I think it's about looking to the future and making those choices. What are you passionate in

Is it not, you know, it's no good to be doing things that you don't like. If you enjoy something

move towards it and you will succeed but then invest properly make those choices um i literally

had a conversation today with one of my guys where i was just there's such potential in the guy and um

and i just wasn't happy i said look you need to start making choices about your career where are

you going what's interesting where do you want to go how are we going to make you realize that your

potential that is so obvious so not everyone's going to have that conversation with you so how

are you going to realize that you have to make the conscious choice to move forward and to get that

motion forward and to start making your own future and as soon as you start doing that

the world opens up you got options you can you can create change but but if you're not moving

change is going to happen to you in probably not the best way well that was great great advice and

i think we are kind of out of time now this is exactly one we tried to close this one but you

know i would love to have you back dave this was great advice and hopefully we'll meet again soon

in person hopefully once this cover is gone yeah man thanks for having me and uh it was a great

chat and yeah i hope to to see you soon thank you everybody who joined us today uh uh hopefully um

you know you enjoyed this session hopefully you learned something from it and hopefully now you

You can go take these tips and you can again go watch if you missed some of the part of

this video and this live show. This is recorded. It's going to be live on C-sharp.live, C-sharp corner YouTube

It's available there also. Just go watch it later. And hopefully these practical tips, I would say

these are actually from our real experiences we've been doing for past 25 years

You and I, we share here, right? And hopefully, you know, you will learn something from it

And hopefully, you know, we'll see your great profile. Now, again, one more thing I have to add

Not just learn. Just go and write about it. talk about it show people what you know publicly because you may be the greatest developer in the

world but if you don't talk about it you don't speak about it you don't go in any shows or

anything nobody you can't build your profile you agree with that yes yeah and we've got a saying

here that we call it you're singing pavarotti in the shower doesn't help yeah there you go yeah you

have to actually sing publicly get on this stage yeah all right all right dave thank you so much

that was great show everybody thank you for joining us and we will see you again next week same time

12 noon eastern cheers everyone thanks mahesh thank you