How to boost your employability with free tools

Andrew: Okay. Let's get started then. My name's Andrew Hine. I'm a CTO of a startup, Reputationaire now, which is designed to help individuals prove ownership of their public data and use that to increase their life, improve their life situation. So Reputationaire now works towards helping people overcome lack of local references, lack of local work experience, lack of local credit scores, lack of local trust, which is super important, especially.

Andrew: When you migrate to a different country, for example, and as part of our five-year journey, through reputation there at that data ownership, blockchain back startup, we realized is that the massive opportunity to help developers increased employability, and own the data. And that's why we started a taxi rank, just under a year ago.

Andrew: So I'm a techie too, just like you guys. My master's at Oxford university. We're sponsored by the UK intelligence service, whether it worked, and that sparked my interest in data ownership. Hence the reputation, they're a tech startup. I've had many businesses, had, a web development company in London, which exited before I moved to Australia.

Andrew: And I also had a big e-commerce website for awhile. so yeah, so we've done a lot of, kind of research into tech employment. and employers often tell us that tech hiring is broken. employers have to place a job adverts and they get thousands of applicants and it's very time consuming and also difficult for them to review this applicants.

Andrew: Sorry, if they’re kind of hiring the junior, the grad or even at the mid-level range. So, we got started, when a CTO here in Melbourne wants to hire a developer and he came to me. He was reluctant to take a risk on a mid-level developer who didn't have any local references or work experience in Australia.

Andrew: So we wondered, is there a better way that we can identify kind of top techies for him? We ran an experiment or we asked for people's job application was theat a GitHub and StackOverflow profile. So we didn't ask any other information that's designed to be super quick and super easy. And as I'm sure you guys know Github hosts 73 million developers codes. I'm gonna take a guess that all of you in here probably have a Github account, and StackOverflow. I assume you’re aware of. I'd love to know that the chat, how much you use StackOverflow is a technical question master for a were 50 million monthly users.

Andrew: So once the applicant said that they had provided their profiles, we ranked them just based on those profiles and that was an initial step. We found people who had a good to have a Github ranking where we were all motivated, passionate for their technology and StackOverflow also had great communication skills, and a lot of employers tell me that it's a very, very important, if not more important than job skills, I'd have soft skills like communication skills. So yeah, so from that we found that StackOverflow is that is a massive missed opportunity. This is a quite from the one of the co-founders of StackOverflow spent a few months earning a five digit reputation and. We're getting a job interviews in the a hundred K range. My co-founder used to answer one StackOverflow question a day, and that got her a very successful tech career.

Andrew: I'm sorry to hear that, Vinson’s got a read-only access to StackOverflow. I'm not sure about that. I'm afraid. but I'm sure there's something that you can get fixed hopefully. So we provided the top applicants for Giuseppe, and in the end he hired a Fede from Argentina who didn't have any local references, in Australia. Giuseppe said that Fede was a diamond in the rough, he died to skip over. And Fede was very happy, much more happy than it looks in the photo because he got his first job in Australia.

Andrew: So from that, we launched TechieRank, which is, just under a year ago, which is designed to help you get access to those hidden data points and provide you a competitive hiring advantage. So we analyzed it. You're a big public data. We come up with kind of statements like that, obviously employers and recruiters are not as technical as we are. So they, they don't really know how to 75% of them don't know how to assess someone's good type account, for example. So coming up with statements like this is designed to kind of help those developers stand out.

Andrew: SoTechieRank offers a free LinkedIn verified credential. We know that employers abd recruiters live on LinkedIn, so it’s important for developers to get themselves in front of employers where they're they're hanging out. I'll give you a quick demo. This is like I said, a free tool designed to help you help developers increase their employability. It's not obviously designed to kind of fix things or hiring problems in the world. It's just another tool in your tool belt, which we've seen, really can help that individual stand out.

Andrew: I'm just going to share my browser. This is techiebank.com homepage. Like I said, it's free for developers, but at a startup, we do hope to make money that's we're hoping employers and recruiters will pay to access the service and find good developers.

Andrew: So if you scroll down, you'll see two buttons login and Github that will log in and stackflow. No signups required, all we need, we do need to verify your own public Github username. Because obviously it's, people would have told me they caught people out applying with someone else's Github, consider anonymous service. So if you go ahead and click login and Github, we then, take, we then get your, just your public username. And you look at just your public data to share to your LinkedIn. So just put a link to the side in the chat. So this is my Github, so my profile ownership should be verified.

Andrew: Then you’re given them the option to share that link and that proof or share a free verified credential to Linkedin. I was clicking on that button. We're taking to LinkedIn, again, no signup or data sharing is required. You just need to be already logged into LinkedIn for a link to work. And then you're given that option to save that license or specific certification to your Github profile. Scroll down on my profile, you can see what they look like. So there's my Github profile. we deliberately chose a colorful colors for the logo because obviously we want people to stand out and I assume employees and recruiters on average spent five or six seconds viewing someone's application. And employers and recruiters can simply click on that link, to then verify that person is, GitHub ownership. So that’s Github.

Andrew: I'll just quickly go through the chat. Does anyone have any questions about how to get that free verified credential on Github? if they think that will help them add value. All right, Fernando, thanks for adding your quickly. Yes. Designed to be super quick, knowing five clicks, and someone is asking how we can play that ranking? and that's definitely something I'll show you next.

Andrew: So ranking is based on people's contributions to code of repositoriess. Repository stars and a techies following. As I said, my employers and recruiters only spend six seconds of reviewing someone's application. They want to know quickly if that person is ranked in the top 50% or not, as you’ll see, embarrassingly, I'm not. But we still verify that ownership of that profile, which again is super important because employers call people out a few times sharing someone else's Github username. So I wonder how common that is. let me also highlight someone's soft skills. So, getting over 50% will include your ranking in your verified credential, as I'm about to show you in StackOverflow. The reason we chose 50%, because for the stackflow, which you kind of in the top half, once you don't want to highlight, if you're not yet at the top. The good news is it's quite easy to increase your rank. and one of the questions we had, before the workshop, was does it work on your private Github repositories?

Andrew: For example, if you work for a company or school, you might have repositories which are not public. And by default, we just look at public data. So the good news is yes, it does. When you click on that login button, you'll be sharing this screen, where we say, kind of just what permissions are they asking for and what data are we going to look at? So let's say before, we only use your public Github username and then get this public information from your GitHub profile. However, GitHub have provided a feature where you can make your private activity public. It’s not the repositories, the repositories say private, but the activity becomes public.

Andrew: And if you made that activity public on your profile and by following these GitHub instructions, that can obviously massively, depending obviously how many private repositories you have that can massively increase your ranking. So I strongly recommend if you have private repositories to turn that setting on and then check your rank again. Like I said, it doesn't give people access to your private repositories. They won’t better see the details of the contributions, and they’re just to help increase your rank. So that's Github. Wow, congratulations morning pants, 6.88%, it's pretty impressive. So good work on that. Hopefully you'll get some value adding that verified credential to your LinkedIn. I'm not going to show you StackOverflow, which obviously most people are familiar with.So StackOverflow obviously is that community for tech questions, used by 50 million developers a month, and obviously you can go in there, as people have said, it saves your life when you're searching for a tech question, I use it every day. Or you want to kind of get a code grab and rather than have to think how you filter it around yourself. Yeah.

Andrew: So obviously it's funny. Good one. Obviously people can vote up and down. Like on Reddit. People take time to kind of lay out their question. And that communication skill is super important to employers. Like I said, I think 95% of employers say that soft skills are as, more important than job skills. So communication skills, particularly in tech, particularly if you're kind of joining it kind of the grad or the junior junior end, where employers know they have to kind of devote some resources to kind of help train you and get you up to speed. Having good communication speed is super important. This question, for example, it's got two upvotes. It looks quite well laid out. One answer which has been accepted by the question poser and these people, obviously again like on GitHub have profiles are included at their direct reputation.

Andrew: Also some people choose to use that kind of real name on StackOverflow. It seems a bit more common than on Github. So again, TechieRank can also check your StackOverflow rank. Because StackOverflow is only used by 14 million developers compared to what is it, 73 million on Github, like I said, it’s a massive missed opportunity to increase that employability, like there’s not many people are doing it.Sso happily for me, I'm in the top 49% of this 14 million users. And again, you can click to add a verified credential for free to your LinkedIn, showing that that profile ownership. I’m also ranking if you're in the top 50%, again, no data, no logins acquired. No data sharing is required. You just need to be already logged into LinkedIn. And again, of course, employees can come to your LinkedIn profile click on your credential and then see how to see your ranking. Oh, go down and see your ranking must be a bug. And yeah, we obviously highlight to employees and produce maybe don't know what StackOverflow is, there's soft skills that demonstrates in particularly for kind of, not very tech savvy, not employers or recruiters or kind of generally new employees and recruiters, coming across as kind of dominant enough, verify credentials, kind of proving someone's willingness to work with others, communication skills, and technical deficiency can really help them increase employability.

Andrew: Also as I saw on the chat, help increase their confidence, because obviously interviews can be scary, scary events. Having these are your confidence, even in a small way is definitely valuable. Oh, wow. Vince is in the top 1.57%. That's impressive. Stackflow top 10%. Vince is definitely very engaged in the communities. Yes, the session is being recorded. I think that link will be out the following day.

Andrew: Ao this is a very short webinar, that's about it. Hopefully, hopefully you've got some value. You realize that sharing, proof of owning you’re Github or StackOverflow via TechieRank for free, or obviously you can include your link in your LinkedIn profile to Github and StackOverflow account manually can add value because you've got six seconds when an employer view your LinkedIn on average. So as they're scrolling down, anything that stands out to them is probably gonna help your chances of landing that dream job.

Andrew: Well, more 2.66% rankings. You guys are smashing it. I've never had a webinar with people with such high rank before, so I'm impressed. Good work. Hopefully you can leverage, you can leverage that. Vince is asking, has it been any indication that employers will start using this ranking in that considerations? So we know that 55% of employers check out someone's Github if the link is given to them, but of those employees, 75% don't really know how to assess it. As we've said, they're very time, very time poor. so they're probably not going to go into too much detail, especially at initial stages. And obviously we're working with the TechieRank to help employers to find those diamond in the rough. TechieRank also works on the employer side, allowing them to check any of the 60 87 million developers and spot those potential diamonds in the rough, not designed to be a kind of a rule in or rule out. Just designed to kind of help those people, typically from more diverse backgrounds, because those people have less work experience in the country, obviously, less local references, and potentially not such a great CV or LinkedIn profile, especially if English is not their first language.

Andrew: For example, when they're applying for an English job, so take your answers to help those employers and not skip over those potential diamonds. We're hoping obviously that more employers will take it up. So if you do know any employers now, please do feel free to share TechieRank with them.

Andrew: Just looking at the questions. So Goldie asks, does the ranking automatically update?

Andrew: Yes. So unfortunately from the way that LinkedIn works, this verified credential, obviously that text there does not update. But yes, every time somebody clicks on your credential, we calculate in real time that ranking that's automatically calculated each time. But obviously if you want to, it's designed to be a very quick job. Log in and then click to share your verified credential, and you can just update your LinkedIn verified credential with your updated. So for example, my current ranking is at 49.06%, which just gone down slightly. Cause I haven't done my stackflow lately, so I'm not going to stop update but yes, it's updated, calculated in real time when someone clicks your verified credential.

Andrew: Having a look at some of the other questions. Yes. So how are the ranks calculated? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I just open my Github credential. So calculators are calculated only using public data. GitHub, for example, we look at the number of contributions that you've made different code repositories and how many code repositories you have. Repository stars if you've received any, other people, and how many people are following you. So it's designed to kind of give a kind of a rough guide of how engaged you are on Github, which was asked for by employers. Because obviously, like I said, they find it very difficult to assess someone's profile.

Andrew: StackOverflow is a bit simpler. StackOverflow credential. StackOverflow already has a reputation score. And if you remember that quote from one of the StackOverflow founders, I think if you get a reputation of 100K andStackOverflow, you know, you'll be getting a five figure job off, as you said. So we just look at the reputation, which is automatically determined by StackOverflow, based on how many votes you get for your questions and the quality of your questions and answers and comments and that kind of thing.

Andrew: And we just be that if you're the top 50%. I'm going to get that quick ranking. Otherwise we just show that you've verified your prevalence. Is a way to share. And on that ranking, we obviously show the employer how that rank was calculated and also kind of inform them what the, what the site does because many employers are not particularly technical themselves and it might be their first time coming across a StackOverflow while you're verified credetial.

Andrew: Is there a way to share this as a story to my LinkedIn contacts? Great question. I'm glad you want to, most people don't want to. So a bit of pushback we had originally was that people assumed that it was going to kind of publish an updated post when you, when you add a new license certification. It doesn't. and I think we wrote that, that had gone to many tabs. I think we wrote that, when you, when you shared LinkedIn, so now I'm not aware of any way you can share a story, actually Linked In contacts, but obviously you could, you could manually write one, maybe just kind of copy and paste or your LinkedIn certificate text.

Andrew: Yeah, there we go. Yeah. So it does not share. And I think to your feed and does not notify your network when you share that there are five potential, which most people, if most people don't want, but I'm glad that morning pants that you do. I think you have to do that manually at this time.

Andrew: So Vince is asking, so would it be a good idea to recalculate right before we submit our CV or resume? Yeah, you can do. Obviously if you've been super active on Github or StackOverflow in that period, now you're ranked might've changed a bit. But remember you've got 87 million users on both the sites, so your ranking may not change that much if not much has gone on. But obviously it's, it's free to update your ranking and verify credentials as many times as you want just takes those five clicks.

Andrew: Goldie's asking if you can share this on Twitter? Yes, you can. So we also give kind of a share link, down here. Actually just verify both my Github and my StackOverflow. you'll see an example of where you can share both of those credentials in one. So if I copy that link, which you can obviously put on Twitter or any other socials that you like, And then, we'll see, it calculates both my Github and my StackOverflow rankings. So it's kind of one link for both of them.

Andrew: Any tips on how to improve our StackOverflow rank? So StackOverflow, the ranking is based on your reputation on the site. This guy has a half a million. Well, that's based on the kind of number of answers you've provided. Well, if people have upvoted your answer or your question, using those upvotes. I think it's very quick and very easy to get a high ranking and StackOverflow because I'm used by 14 million people. 14 million people have accounts at the moment, obviously many more, 50 million a month use it to get answers. But yeah, my co-founder used to answer that one StackOverflow a question a day. Now she's got a crazy, crazy reputation. So yeah, so we kind of put that in as kind of a once a day for a month or so I think you can be a really high ranking in very quickly and very easily to the app. And that's a real missed opportunity by developers at the moment. okay.

Andrew: So, yeah, Wilson's asking me about this, this read-only status and StackOverflow. Wilson, I'm afraid I've never heard of such a problem. It sounds very annoying. Are you able to create a new account? I'm not sure if anyone else in the chat can help with that. Yeah, maybe it's that maybe it's a bug. I don't know. I've never seen it, I'm afraid. No strange. You might want to try making a new account.

Andrew: So Vince is decided not to not use StackOverflow, because of the abuse. Unfortunately with any online platforms, there's always going to be a kind of trolls and people out to promote negativity, unfortunately. But yes, which is kind of, kind of brings us back to our reputation app, which is kind of our start-ups, oops, flagship, product, type, which is designed to kind of help individuals kind of prove that they are trustworthy and reliable in general online, by allowing them to prove ownership of that online, data from any website. And that's designed to kind of help, kind of rule-out kind of trolls and that kind of thing, not really the topic of today's discussion.

But yeah, I'm well aware and it saddens me about the lack of kind of trust and confidence online and how people inherently just don't trust others. I've done a lot of research into kind of trust, and I know that, when you first meet people, you look for reasons to distrust them. And if you can't find any you very quickly, and then obviously they can destroy that trust. Online, it seems that a lack of trust is the default.

Andrew: I don't want to take up. One more question. Daniel was asking how he can set himself apart from someone who has a degree in computer science as a self-taught developer? Daniel, when we're working with employers and recruiters, we find kind of the archaic, conventional larger kind of corporate, tech employers, they require a computer science degree still. So obviously if you don't have a computer science degree, you're going to fall down that first hurdle. But having said that there's more and more companies, especially kind of the smaller startups, or those companies who don't have quite as famous as kind of Facebook and Google, who struggled to kind of attract enough talent, who kind of dropped the requirement for the degrees and are more interested in kind of what you've proved that you can actually do.

Andrew: Obviously getting any kind of doing any online courses, and including obviously the educational section in your LinkedIn profile, for example, on your CV, hopefully including your techiebank verified credentials, there's other website services offering free credentials, but for doing tests and stuff. For example, I did this triple byte software engineer test a long time ago. I got another free credential. I think it's just about, building up your StackOverflow as you're building up your LinkedIn and your CV, as plenty as rich as possible and kind of get kind of fact proof, fact-based demonstration of, skills, abilities, interested in enthusiasm. It takes time, but it's something that you can kind of build up over time. So, like I said, for example, maybe you want to ask about one StackOverflow question a day, for example, as my co-founder did. I don't see why you can't show your LinkedIn, I guess you can put it in the group chat.

Andrew: Okay, everyone, is the half hour mark, many thanks for taking the time to attend. if there's any more questions, feel free to contact me. That details on TechieRank and our socials. I really do hope, that helps you increase your employability and you got kinda got some value, from both insights to be shared of how to increase your employability and also help you for free, actually that adds value for you as well.

Andrew: I wish you all good luck and thank you for the time to attend. Yeah, Daniel was putting his LinkedIn in the chat there. Cool. Okay, everybody, there will be a recording available, understanding tomorrow in a few days. So look out for that on the Codementor site. Cool. Thanks for attending morning pants. Congratulations again on your high ranking. Thank you, Fernando and everyone else. Have a good evening or rest of your day, depending on where you are in the world.