Show Your Work, and You Might Get Lucky

That’s the premise of this post:

Publishing your work increases your luck

How can we increase the odds of finding luck? By being a person who works in public. By doing work and being public about it, you build a reputation for yourself. You build a track record. You build a public body of work that speaks on your behalf better than any resume ever could.

The post is written by a developer, and he’s got good advice for anyone looking for that kind of work. I’m not a developer, but I can say with some confidence that this advice applies to everyone. In this job market, who you know is everything.

Scratch that. It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you and your work. The more people who see your work, the more likely you are to land a job. It’s not always that simple, but it sure increases the odds. Maybe for the rest of us, it’s not about having a GitHub repository for our projects, but about writing a blog, being involved in user groups, or volunteering with your industry’s educational resource. It’s about people seeing your work.

I’ve mentioned more than once that the last two jobs I moved to, I was hired by someone I already knew professionally. Thinking back, it’s actually four of the last five jobs where I was hired by someone I already knew. A couple of them were the result of someone contacting me rather than applying. All of them were hiring managers who were familiar with my work.

I have been pretty lucky in that regard. You can see why I’ve had that share of luck, though, right?

The more people who know your work, the wider the job market is for you. Right now, I’d recommend doing everything you can to keep growing it.

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