[accent]There is a sea of mobile development job opportunity out there, but if you don’t distinguish yourself from other developers, your competition could be getting the best app development jobs before you do. Pull your personal brand out of the water with these tips and you’ll sail from one awesome mobile development job to another.[/accent]
Start a Professional Blog
Hiring companies want to know more about you than just your skill set and past accomplishments. Prove that you’re more than a mobile app machine by writing regularly about your development career, mobile industry news, and general musings related to your craft. It doesn’t have to be a novel; just enough to show you are passionate about and invested in what you do. Share your posts on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to give your network and online reputation an added social boost.
Network, Network, Network
The more people you meet and talk to about your development career, the more exposure you’ll get to potential jobs. The point here is to get as many people as possible familiar with who you are and what you’re good at. The ideal result: one of your new contacts hears about an iOS job that they don’t have the development chops for, but they pass the info on to you and give you a glowing recommendation because they know you can get the job done.
Create Tutorials
Nothing screams “I know what I’m doing” quite like showing others how it’s done. Think about that first Android newsfeed app you developed and how helpful those tutorials were when you were first starting out. You can return the favor to new developers and show prospective employers how awesome your development skills are by writing out and sharing your own mobile app tutorial (Note: Tutorials are excellent content for your new professional blog.)
Participate in Online Communities
Getting recommendations and building a stellar reputation for yourself are easy tasks when you make a habit out of helping others and throwing your thoughts about the industry on public stages. Start by helping others on forums and communities with their questions and challenges, whether that’s working with multiple screen sizes, finding and fixing bugs quickly, or choosing to work with one platform over another. Next, weigh in on the latest developments in the mobile app industry to further establish your reputation as an informed and actively engaged mobile developer. Hiring managers will often go with the developer who lives and breathes their practice over anyone else.
Market Your Apps
You know your apps are the best out there, but does everyone else? Successful mobile developers are preceded by their apps as well as their reputations. Marketing your app, gaining positive reviews and of course, amassing downloads are sure fire ways to impress hiring managers who are researching your personal brand online. When they see how popular your work is, they’ll want you to do the same for their mobile app strategy.
