Coding is NOT Enough in 2025...

Key Takeaways

In 2025, just being a good developer isn't enough. You can be the best Python developer on the planet, but if you don't know how to position yourself, communicate your skills, and leverage the right tools, then you're going to get buried in all of the noise. Now, the market is saturated. Everybody knows Python and JavaScript. Everybody has a CRUD app. Everyone's portfolio has the same weather app and the same to-do list. So, if you want to stand out, you need more than just code. You need a strategy and an entirely different set of skills. Now, I know this firsthand because over the past eight months, I've mentored hundreds of developers one-on-one through Dev Launch. And here's the pattern that I keep seeing. They don't lack technical skills. They don't need to learn one more framework. What they actually lack is the knowhow to get hired. And that's exactly what I want to share with you in today's video. For most of you watching this, you don't need a bunch of new skills. You're not missing a ton of bullet points on your resume. you simply do not know how to get in front of the right people and actually land a job. So with that in mind, what do employers actually want? Well, simply put, they want someone who's a lowrisk hire, someone who can start today and start adding value from day one. They're not looking for the passionate developer. They're looking for someone that they can prove will be a safe, high value hire. Now, as someone who's hired plenty of people myself, I just hired someone yesterday. Trust me, making the wrong hire is extremely expensive. Now, employers know this, which is why they make you jump through endless hoops, assessment, interviews, and go through all of these processes just to potentially get a job. Now, the takeaway here is that you need to present yourself as the no-brainer candidate, the one that they don't need to gamble on, the one that they don't need to train heavily, that they know will deliver from day one. And that's what the rest of this video is going to focus on, how you can present yourself as that. So when someone reads your profile, they don't go, "Oh, maybe I'll take a chance on this guy. Maybe he'll be great." They'll go, "I know 100% because of the evidence that's provided. If I hired this person, they will deliver value, and I'm not making a mistake." That's the thing that companies are looking for, a risk-free hire. Now, I want to talk about how to actually stand out in this market. And one of the most important ways to do that, which we're going to continue to talk about, is to specialize. Now, in fact, let's take cyber security. Companies desperately need people who can think like attackers and break into their systems before criminals do. Now, that's where Try Hackme, the sponsor of this video, comes in. Now, it's the world's largest hands-on cyber security training platform that over 5 million people globally are already using to master ethical hacking. 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So like I mentioned, I want to talk about exactly how to stand out. And I have five main ways to do that. Starting with to specialize. Now, as I discussed, it's extremely important to pick a niche. You need to be known as a front-end developer or a back-end developer or a machine learning engineer, an embedded C++ engineer. It doesn't matter what it is, but you need to pick something. You can't simply have a general resume that states that you're great at every single programming language, every single framework, that you could do any developer job. Now, even if that's true, people simply don't believe you and they would rather hire someone who's extremely tailored to the specific role. Now, let me give you a concrete example, right? I'm hiring staff for Dev Launch. I just wanted to hire someone who's going to be a technical recruiter and essentially help our students tailor their resume and their LinkedIn. Now, when I'm looking at different applications, I don't want to hire just a normal software engineer. Sure, that person could do the job. they might be a fantastic candidate, but I literally just threw out every single resume that started with software engineer because I want to hire a technical recruiter. I want someone who does exactly what I'm looking for, which is ré reviews, LinkedIn reviews, and helping students pick their specialization and set up their branding. So, while you might be really good at this thing, if your resume and your profile isn't tailored to that specific role, I'm not even going to consider you. I'm not even going to read through the bullet points because I want someone specific. Now, the same thing obviously applies to developers. If I'm looking to hire a back-end engineer, I'm not going to hire someone who has full stack on their resume. Even though you might be the best back-end engineer that exists on this planet, if it doesn't clearly state that in the first few lines of your resume or your LinkedIn, I'm not even going to look at you. This is how companies hire. They want someone who is an exact fit. Again, a low-risk person to bring in that doesn't waste company resources. So, keep that in mind. You need to specialize. And if you're not going to do that, you at least need to tailor all of your resumes and applications to the exact type of role that you're applying to so you look like you are an exact fit. Nobody wants a generalist. They want someone who is very, very good at the specific role they're hiring for. Now, the next major way to stand out in this market is to build a personal brand. Now, I'm not saying this is easy, and I know that most of you are not going to do this bluntly, but that's why you're going to stand out if you do this, because developers hate to do anything related to sales or branding or marketing or posting online or being on social media. So, if you're one of the few developers that's willing to put yourself out there a little bit, then you're going to stand out massively and you're going to have a ton of opportunities. Now, think of all of the developers that you know, right? All of them have some kind of personal brand and post on social media a massive amount of times. Think about Instagram, think about Tik Tok, think about YouTube, whatever, right? All of the developers that you probably know that you don't know maybe in real life realize that having a personal brand is the number one asset that they can possibly have. So, they focus a massive amount of energy into building that personal brand where they can make obviously a lot of money from that, but they also can generate a ton of opportunities. I can tell you when I started this personal brand and I started posting on YouTube and making some tutorials. This was very small. It was a part-time thing. I was doing it while I was in high school and even then I was generating opportunities where people wanted to hire me for freelance work. They wanted to bring me in for a job interview. They wanted me to maybe sell something for them, right? Whatever it was, because there was evidence that I actually knew what I was doing and I stood out from all of the other developers. You have to imagine, right? If I'm looking through 100 LinkedIn profiles and trying to hire a developer, if I see one that has 5,000 followers, even 2,000 followers, that posts a little bit, that shares a project that they've done, that just shows me something else, they stand out, right? Because there's more evidence of what they're capable of doing. I hope this makes sense. But when I say personal brand, I don't mean become a social media influencer. I simply mean do something, post something, share something about yourself that gives me more information on you so that when I look you up, I can see more than just an empty LinkedIn profile and a boilerplate resume. Now, the next way to stand out here goes handinhand with the personal brand. And this is to provide an enormous amount of evidence of your skills. Now, if you're more of a junior developer, you're just coming out of school, for example, this could be through a really impressive project, right? something that you put on your resume that's deployed that someone could check out. Ideally, something that real users have actually touched, that's evidence that you actually know what you're doing and you know how to build software. Now, if we talk about the personal brand, if you're posting, you know, once a month talking about stuff that you're working on, insights that you have as a developer, new frameworks that you're checking out, a project that you worked on, that's evidence that you know what you're doing, right? That you're actually a developer. If you've been a developer for 20 plus years and you've worked seven different jobs, that's an enormous amount of evidence that you know what you're doing. If you graduated university and you have four internships and you worked at some top tech companies, for example, that's a great amount of evidence and a reason you might get called in for an interview. The point is that anytime you want to demonstrate you have some skill, you need to be able to back it up. It's not simply good enough to just list that you know something. People just simply will not believe you. Anytime I bring someone in for an interview, if they don't back up what they're saying with some kind of proof or evidence to demonstrate they actually know what they're doing because they've done it in the past, I simply dismiss anything that they say. For example, if I ask you, okay, what's your best programming language? And you just tell me, oh, Python. And you don't tell me why Python is your best programming language or where you've used it, a number of projects that you've worked on, I don't believe you. Whereas, if you ask me and I say, Python is my favorite programming language. I use it all the time. I've been writing in it for 10 plus years. I have over 1,000 YouTube videos where I've written Python code. I've deployed over 500 projects. I've worked on in a production environment. You get the idea. I believe you because there's so much evidence that I just have to. That's what you want to aim for. And again, it's not easy to build up this evidence, but you need to look at your profile and just look at yourself objectively and say, can I actually back up what I'm saying? Can I prove that I know these things that I have listed on my resume or in my LinkedIn profile? If not, then you need to start building that evidence. Now, the next major way to stand out as a developer is to be professional and to be prepared. Okay, now this is going to sound crazy and I know a lot of you probably aren't even going to believe me here, but I have interviewed a lot of people. I've looked at a lot of applications. I cannot tell you how many people don't spend even an extra 2 seconds to make sure that they have proper grammar if they're answering a screening question, for example. They respond with a professional email address, not gamertag 73, you know,gmail.com. to show up prepared when we get into an interview means they're dressed nicely, they're in a clean room, their mom's not screaming in the background, I don't hear pots and pans, you get what I'm saying here, the more that you can present yourself as a professional, the more serious I'm going to take you as someone who's potentially going to hire you, right? If you show up really well dressed, prepared, you have some really great questions that you want to ask me, you exactly understand the role, you've looked me up on social media, you know what I've done in the past, you know the type of company that you're going into, you can explain clearly your skills, answer common interviewing questions without, you know, bumbling around and mumbling and not knowing the answer, then immediately I just take you more seriously. even if your answer isn't great, even if you're not as good as some of the other developers, I'm going to just intrinsically believe more of what you're saying and want to work with you. So, just as a developer, because I know so many of us don't do this, and it's crazy to me how many people don't do this. Be professional, be prepared, do that little bit of work, put in some effort. I know that it's annoying when you're applying to a thousand plus jobs and nobody's getting back to you, but spend the extra 10 seconds to send a personalized message to make sure your sentences start with a capital letter, to use proper English. There's really no excuse today when we have AI tools, for example, that can literally do all of this for you. Now, the last and arguably most important way that you can stand out as a developer is understanding how to communicate. Now, this means that you can talk properly, you can maintain eye contact, you can ask good questions, you can speak fluent English. I know that's going to sound crazy, and I know a lot of us don't have English as a first language, but if you walk into an interview and English isn't strong for you immediately, people are going to think less of you just because of the way that you're talking. Look, I don't like that that's the reality. It shouldn't be the case, but it's just the way that human beings work. And I can tell you as someone who tries actively not to do this, it still happens, right? If someone forgets a word, if someone's speaking with really poor grammar, you just think less of them, you think they're not as qualified as someone else, especially in a professional setting. So, it's something you really, really need to work on. Now, that also goes with the uming and the aing and the pauses or the lack of confidence. No matter what you say, you need to speak confidently. Like, you actually believe yourself. There's so many times that I talk to different students and when they tell me something, they don't even believe what they're saying. How am I going to believe you if you don't believe the words coming out of your own mouth, right? Even if you're not 100% confident, even if you're embellishing a little bit, whatever you say, you just need to say it like it's the truth. Otherwise, people purely won't believe you. Now, look, there's so many other things. I can make a whole video on how to communicate properly as a developer. If you want that, let me know in the comments down below, and I most likely will. The point is that you need to speak calmly, clearly, and with confidence. If you can do that in an interview situation or just in life in general, that is going to make you stand out tremendously because most developers simply cannot. Now, this leads me to essentially a mindset shift that I realized kind of early on in this career that I want to share with you that I think will change the way that you look at things. Now, that is that life is all about sales. It's literally just sales. The people who land the best jobs, earn the most amount of money, build the best relationships, it doesn't matter. They share one thing. They know how to sell themselves and how to communicate with confidence. But developers, right, we love the excuses like I'm an introvert or I don't like social media or I just want to write code. I don't want to focus on those things. But the reality is that these are excuses and they don't get results, right? Actions get results. So that's why with most of my students, one of the first things that we work on is building confidence and learning to present themselves effectively. And here's the crazy thing. Because so few developers do this well, it really doesn't take much to stand out in this area. It's like a few weeks of practice. So if you're not actively working on this, essentially how you sell your skills, how you convince someone that you're actually the right person for the job, then you need to start that now because it's massively holding you back. So that's going to kind of conclude this video. And I want you to remember that in 2025, coding is just the baseline, right? The developers who are winning are the ones who combine their technical skills with branding, communication, and an overall strategy. Now, that's what gets you hired. Lastly, a big shout out to Try HackMe again for sponsoring this video. Make sure to check them out from the link below. And with that said, I'll see you in another video. [Music]