How I landed a job through Twitter

Don’t know what Kynetx is? Read this article by Jesse Stay explaining why the current model of the web is broken and how Kynetx solves that problem: context-aware apps.

If you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen my recent tweet:

It’s been a long and rewarding journey.

Several years ago, I started following Phil Windley’s blog. I don’t even remember how I found it. It was either the fact that I listen to the IT Conversations podcast (of which he is the executive producer), or that he’s a BYU Computer Science professor (where I go to school).

A little while after that, I left and went to Europe for two years. When I came back, I learned that Phil had started a company called Kynetx. His posts hardly make any sense to me, but I kept reading to see what it was all about.

Around that same time, I also started following him on Twitter. (Before my two-year hiatus I had thought Twitter was a rather useless idea, but I decided to give it a try this time around. It was what all the cool kids were doing, after all.)

Every once in a while, I’d retweet things Phil wrote. Eventually I guess he took notice of me and personally invited me to the inaugural Kynetx Impact Conference in Provo. I went. There was some pretty mind-blowing stuff there.

I wrote a little “hello world” app but didn’t do much else with Kynetx for a while. But I started following almost all of the employees on Twitter and became intrigued by all the cool stuff they were building. I started tweeting a lot about #Kynetx. I even wrote an app of my own, which the Kynetx guys were kind enough to let me present at a visit they made to the BYU CS department.

It was quite apparent to me by now that Kynetx had taken note of me. But I never expected they would offer me a job. I was quite surprised when the VP of Developer Services called me up and invited me to their customary Free Lunch Friday for an interview. Soon thereafter, I was hired to join their two other interns in the Lehi office.

It’s been interesting to see how all of this grew out of my use of social media to follow the interesting things going on right around me.

I’m reminded of Joel Spolsky’s book, Smart and Gets Things Done. The best programmers don’t have to go searching for jobs–the jobs come to them. I don’t pretend to think that I’m anything special as far as programmers go. But I can tell you that networking and effective use of social media can go a long way in advancing your career in the direction you want to take it.

BTW, thanks to Sam for coming up with the title, whether unwittingly or not. :-)