How Asa Howard Landed his First Data Job

๐Ÿ’ฌ How to Cold Message Your Way Into a Data Job

January 25, 2023โ€ข1 min read

There are two ways to land a data job:

1) The Hard Way (competing against 428 other candidates)

2) The Easy Way (applying where the recruiter knows your name) 

I prefer the second. How do we make that happen?

This week on the Data Career Podcast, I sat down with Asa Howard who recently landed a Logistics Analyst job.

He talked about when he started his job search, he was applying to every data job he could find on LinkedIn.

The result? Rejection after rejection. 

After 6 months of frustration & disappointment, he decided he needed to do something different. 

Instead of mass-applying, or what I refer to as the "spray-and-pray" method, he narrowed his job search to 3 specific companies he wanted to work for that had open roles. 

He did research on them, understood how he could help them, then reached out to several employees that worked for these companies via LinkedIn & asked for 15 minutes. 

Half said yes. 

So by the time he applied, the internal hiring recruiter knew his name.

From there the interview process was EASY, and Asa landed his first data job.

Rejection after rejection turned into a simple "you're hired" with just one simple strategy:

Stop the "Spray-And-Pray" job applications.

Start networking.

Focus on, "It's not what you know. It's who you know." And not even who you know, it's who you can GET to know (through cold LinkedIn messages). 

And that is where you'll find success.

You can listen to my FULL interview with Asa here ๐Ÿ‘‡

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/42-how-cold-messaging-helped-me-land-his-first-data/id1547386535?i=1000595093170

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5PJwdErE8LirZyTxX1nGBy?si=w3H8UyKcTmaLtnAGTAW9aA

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