💡A few weeks ago I had a discussion that inspired me

A colleague told me how he ended up never having to apply for a job ever again.

I loved the mindset. This conversation really made me reflect and take a step back on how I planned to achieve my career goals. With a few days of hindsight, I decided to take it seriously and convert this into a long term project for the following reasons:

1. Best candidates don’t apply for jobs, recruiters fight for them
2. To be offered the best professional opportunities and be able to choose what challenge I want to take up as soon as possible. I don't want to wait until I'm 30 years old to be told that I have enough experience to take up an ambitious challenge.
3. The path that I will take to get there will push me to never stop learning and be at the top of the skills most demanded in my industry

Today I’m 22 and thinking about never applying for a job ever again is not something natural (even more in the current context). I’ve just finished my Business School where I’ve been prepared during 4 years to please recruiters and pass challenging rounds of job interviews. Now it’s time to change perspective, do things differently and invest my time learning and developing side projects that prepare me to deliver strong added value to real customers.

This is a long term project and I believe that the sooner you start working on it, the more chances you will have to achieve your most ambitious goals 🚀

Thus, I thought about what could be my next move to achieve such a goal. The first threshold that came to my mind was that as long as I am not able to sell myself as a freelance, I need to keep learning and build side projects. This does not only require knowledge and skill but mostly confidence in your ability to solve real-life business problems and make customers pay for it. Once you are able to do that you will be forever independent.

But how do you reach that level of skill and confidence ? 🤔

Here is my methodology.

⚠️ Disclaimer : you DON’T need to be experienced in your field to start this project. As a side note, I started to work in Data less than 6 months ago and I plan to achieve that goal as soon as possible.

👨‍💻 If you're really serious about getting a role somewhere, start the job before you have it

First, you need to project yourself as if you had no choice but to start working as a freelance and be ready to find your first customer in less than 6 months. Mindset first, skill will come 🙏

Whatever your field or background, I’m convinced that anyone must be able to find at least one customer on the internet that he can help with what he’s learnt in the past few years. This does not mean that you will necessarily become a freelance, but I like using that image as it’s easy to put yourself in the shoes of an auto entrepreneur to check if you feel confident and skilled enough to sell yourself.

Then there are two important questions that should come to your mind:

1. What skill would you be able to sell if you had to find your first customer tomorrow ? Do what you’re good at
2. What skills would you like to be able to offer ? Do what you are passionate about

To help you answer the second question, I recommend you to find the ideal company and ideal role you're going for. And then do your research.

• Scan the job offers on online platforms and identify what recruiters are asking for. What does a person in that position do day-to-day? Figure it out and then replicate it.
• If you feel it’s not enough, go on LinkedIn and find a way to schedule a call with the top 3 persons matching with your dream position.
• I also encourage you to go on freelance platforms and check the best profiles (the most recommended and visible on the platforms) in your field, look at how they market themselves and what are their top skills.

Then, aggregate clearly each skill into categories and think about how you can coordinate (mix/link) them to answer the most critical business problems that you identified in the industry you are targeting. Once you’re done with this step, you have your value proposition.

Now, you need a plan to master these skills.

I recommend you to use the weekend project framework. You spend the week building foundational skills through various courses. On the weekend, you design your own projects, inline with the role you're after and work on them.

Find the best online resources related to the skills you want to develop. Look for the best recommendations on the internet or directly ask your network on LinkedIn to save you time.

You should be able to find free content to start with. Only buy training courses when you have consumed enough free content to merit premium ones.

Structure the resources you found in a logical progressive order. Having a well defined achievable timeline is key to your consistency over time. You should start with basic stuff (prioritise what excites you the most as well) even if you risk going over things you already covered in your curriculum to make sure you have built strong enough foundations before leveling up.

Working on your own projects helps you build specific knowledge, they're what compound knowledge into skill, skill which can't be taught in courses 💎

There are unlimited options in terms of kinds of projects you can develop. If you don’t know where to start, inspire yourself from things that have already been done by peers on the internet or think about how you can bootstrap a section of what a person working in your ideal role does day to day.

At the end of the day, instead of only having a collection of certificates, you will have a portfolio showing evidence of you trying to put what you've learned into practice and this is what is expected from you in a real job.

The bottom line of this framework is don’t wait for companies to give you experiences, build your own ones 👊

Overall, I recommend to put yourself under (the right level of) pressure with deadlines and concrete goals that you want to achieve. And you stick to it.

I have to say that the path is not going to be an easy one, you will have to accept to suck at something new and embrace it. The secret sauce is great planning, dedication and endurance 🏃‍♂️

🦸‍♂️ Make you visible. Communicate about your work and share your learning path

What’s the point of building amazing skills and projects if you don’t let them know ? 🤷‍♂️

Communicating your work is fundamental to create opportunities talking to your next customer or boss. I recently realised how much people are curious about what you are doing and how much I was missing a great opportunity to gain visibility by not doing so. It’s time to take action and be brave enough to create and share your own content. Remind yourself that you’re not going for perfection, you are going for progress. There is absolutely no risk here.

Luckily, if you apply most of the advice from the first section of this post, you will have a lot of things to share with your audience.

Indeed, when working on your side projects, document your learning path. At the end of each day, take 5 minutes to write down what you have been working on, the things that worked, the things that didn’t and also how you can improve what you produced. At the end of the week, you will be able to share an article with all your learnings and to share with your audience what is your next move as well as what’s holding you back. It gives your audience an opportunity to ask questions and offer advice.

Are you targeting people working in your team ? Your future employer ? A potential customer ? Thinking about "Who's it for ?" is also fundamental as it will significantly impact the way you structure your story and the level of detail you provide.

Share your articles on Twitter, LinkedIn or even better, send them directly to the person in charge of hiring for the role you're after.

I also recommend you to build your own blog. There are a hundred solutions to do that freely and in 5 minutes.

🔥 Next steps

To be honest, I don’t have any evidence proving that this method is effective, but something I am sure is that you will discover if you really want what you are going after.

I will apply all these principles to myself and test if this process works for me. I am thinking about measuring the impact of my actions in terms of increase in my audience, new interaction opportunities with professionals, job offers, etc.

In a few days, I will share with you my training plan which is called My Online Self-made Data & Analytics Masters Degree to help you build your own one from a template.

Your motivation and dedication are your best friends. If you want to get advice and feedbacks on your plan, reach me on Linkedin 📥.