Similar situation (in some sense, an entry level entrepreneur here)
Except, I have a decade plus experience. Yet find your situation relatable.
After graduating with an engineering degree from a not so bad college in India, all my job applications were going in an abysmal pit. Even the 18 call centers I applied to rejected me (despite being told of having reasonably good English language skills). What worked was relocating to a metropolitan town and literally going door to door in person and show up at companies and walk-ins, and I got an engineering job (btw, I'm at that exact stage now - will get to it later).
Few years later, went to US for MS, spent a year after graduating in applying for jobs - stopped counting applications after 2250th application. Didn't even get a single interview. Out of desperation, did a site-wide search for some niche enterprise software name I knew about on craigslist, landed a craigslist subdomain page for a town I hadn't heard of - got job interview and the job. Fast forward a few years later, I had been looking for a way to find a meaningful occupation to return to central India - spent all my vacations over the years looking for something that I could do. Never found it. So one fine day, I packed up my bags from a year old FAANG job, and came back. Since then, I've been building, demoing, pitching, improvising but haven't yet made an income - neither through my network back in the US, nor cold calling. So now, I'm on foot again, just showing up at companies and realizing: the local market is much different, their needs are different ; and in person presence is a huge catalyst in advancing sales cycle. In person communication is introducing me to signals and adapt my offerings. AI, if anything, has only helped be more productive, but I totally see how it would impact entry level engineering jobs - and I don't have any answers for that. Except, that increasing the surface area by in-person interactions may be an avenue to explore if you already haven't. Hanging out at coworking spaces, going to meetups where your potential "customers" would hang out etc. might be worth a try. For a such a well written article, I'd hope someone with the right opportunity may reach out to you. Good luck.
how do you approach your network - if you don't mind me asking, what language do you use when reaching out to your network. I'm seeing my network mostly turn cold shoulder.
When I say "network" think less LinkedIn and more people you've built up enough trust with to swap phone numbers and keep each other informed of opportunities, provide references etc.
yeah, so the people who would make time to grab a beer with me when I was visiting their town, would not respond to my texts. And that's why I asked for the specific language you'd use. I'm using something like:
"Hi XYZ... I've started consulting, and I'm looking for new business opportunities. I'd love to talk to you about this... could we catch up over a call sometime next week"
may be there is a better way to do that. I've limited 1st degree network, and I don't want to burn it all, so I stopped sending these messages after all the first 4-5 didn't seem to go as planned!
What you say, makes sense! But I'm not even finding myself that much further in the sales funnel yet. I'm at the top end at the moment.
Let's say you have US presence, how do you go about customer acquisition?
(I do have a couple of friends in US, whom I can hire - these people are not core-tech, more of analyst profiles, but I will help with boots on ground, if needed.)
Oh well, That’s a different problem and I’d guess one that general marketing could help you start with. Such a broad topic. Since you’re remote you probably want to try to get leads on your website, but there’s a billion ways to approach that of course
Do you have pointers to any good resources on the top few ways for lead generation? I’m a noob in marketing, coming from tech, so I can use qualified recommendations!
I partly agree with your opinion. But here is how it looks like at my end so far:
with existing network:
people have gotten cold - when I honestly put across my situation. People who would gladly go out on beer with me when, and have good conversations, have gone drop dead silent when I reach out: "Hi XYZ... I've started consulting, and I'm looking for new business opportunities. I'd love to talk to you about this... could we catch up over a call sometime next week"
How'd you reach out?
huge consulting rates:
I'm not sure what you'd consider huge rates, but I'm not expecting US rates here.
These physical locations are known as captive centers/global-capability-center...! And these companies are least likely to give me contracts/employment in my situation - I live away from metros in Central India (MP).
I'm looking for remote, but am open to partly visiting the client side at their expense - this was something very common with the consultants that my US employers hired in the US.
As someone in b2b enterprise software realm - Product Lifecycle Management specifically - I'm not seeing any avenues for remote gigs.
I've over 15 yrs. of exp. including at bigTech in US, and recently left my bigtech full-time job and relocated to India.
It feels like barring visa-constraints, it would have been a lot easier to find PLM/Eng-Systems gigs while in the US. Any advice for someone in my situation - I'd love to still live here and not relocated for a job again! Tx!
