Attend a minimum of three industry events
Industry events offer several benefits:
- Introductions to interesting tech topics that you will not cover in your studies.
- Support for personal projects from industry people using the same tech.
- Interesting conversations with those who want to chat about new tech they are using or want to try.
- Easy way to increase your circle of industry connections.
- Demonstrates to employers that you are pro-active in pursuit of your interests.
- Hosting meetups is used by a number of employers as a recruiting method.
Of course, they should also be interesting. Do not blame the program if you choose boring topics!
What sort of events should I use for this?
In short, pick events where more than half the people there are likely to be from industry.
Meetups happen every week, year-round. There are over 100 tech groups in Wellington on topics as diverse as your favourite language or framework, to IoT, js, css, React, robotics, blockchain, AWS, UX, game developers, Docker, OWASP, Agile - and many more.
Feel free to check if your chosen event counts. The guiding principle is whether it facilitates conversations with industry people. The idea is that we can't force you to talk to them, but if you do, typically you will find they are normal and interesting people.
Attending tech meetups, ITP events, a hackathon weekend, tech conference, SoT meet-n-greet, tech startup events, are all good examples. Lecture style events for students are great for passing on knowledge, but pretty poor for engaging with industry in return (ratio 2:100+ ?).
For the report;
- do not duplicate events. For example, only one industry 'Meet and Greet' event or only one 'Meetup' with a Ruby on Rails group (but that there are alternatives, including Python and Java groups, Continuous Integration, etc.).
- avoid discussing CV and Interview workshops as examples of meeting industry. They are great for passing on experience but the topic you have in common is CVs and Interviews, not a common interest in tech.
You can and should of course keep returning to groups you like, but only one attendance counts for your reflective report.
Tech MeetUps as an employment strategy
This is not as straight forward as turning up to a tech MeetUp with a CV. Everyone else will be there to talk to interesting people about their favourite tech topic. You will definitely stand out if you turn up, vaguely claim that you are interested and leave after handing your CV around.
When tech MeetUps are used as a recruitment strategy, employers are looking to identify people that are engaged, enthusiastic and doing stuff. Turning up once, does not typically cut it. What does work is turning up regularly, learning, putting it into practise and talking about your wins and frustrations.
There is effort required to do this, but if you find the right topic and crowd it won't feel like it.
Follow your interests, stay for a while if it remains interesting, otherwise move on and follow your next interest. Think of MeetUps as part of your journey in tech, rather than a destination merely to tick an academic box.
