Dany Orozco
Listen to the interview (approx. 38 min.) or download it.
Graduated in 2013 with a major in Music Therapy. Principal instrument: drums.
Position: Freelance Technical Recruiter working for Technetalent, a small staffing agency based in New York City which finds software developers and engineers for open roles. Dany works remotely from her home in Guadalajara, Mexico, going through LinkedIn profiles to find people whose experience and skills meet the requirements for the open jobs. She then sends out contact inquiries and sends on to her boss any who indicate interest.
Overview: After completing her internship and graduating, Dany moved back to Mexico, intending to start her own Music Therapy practice. Music therapy was pretty much nonexistent there, and finding clients was a lot of work. She supplemented this work with teaching. In 2015, she studied music prouction in L.A., then upon returning realized that she wanted to pursue a career in a band, touring and gigging, “When I’m 40 or 50 I can go back to music therapy, but if I don’t do a band now it’s never going to happen.” Dany spent much of 2016 writing songs, and joined the band Lunaem later that year.
A music therapy practice has very rigid hours, and Dany needed more flexibility, so he let that taper off. In May, 2017, she signed up with Upwork.com as a freelance worker, and did many different little jobs; helping plan a wedding, finding songs for a dance app, doing administrative work for a start-up, etc. After a few months, she started working for Technetalent, and that relationship has continued to this day.
You can see Dany’s LinkedIn profile here.
Choice Quotes: “It’s very interesting. You’re looking at people’s lives and it’s interesting to see how people describe their own work. Sometimes they write about stuff beyond just their work too. I’m very happy with all the flexibility–both when I work and how many hours– and my boss is really cool.”
My own expectations when I graduated was I had to work full-time in music or would be a failure. I taught music lessons to kids, event though I didn’t enjoy it much. There’s a moment you have to make a compromise of either doing something music-related that’s unenjoyable or doing something non-music related that allows you to have the life–and do the music!–that you like. For me it’s better to have a non-music job that allows me to pursue my musical passion.”
“If you’re interested in technical recruiting, it will help to learn a little about the different technologies you’ll be recruiting for. You’ll more easily figure out which jobs people are better suited for. ”
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