I Got An Offer | Job Searching In A Tough Tech Market Ep 4

Hi everyone, what's up? Welcome back to my channel. We got a job! After job hunting for four months, literally the hardest job hunt of my entire life, I finally landed a few offers. So I just wanted to kind of wrap up this job interview series that I had documenting my job search in 2024 with this final part where I just summarize the and then leave you with some very helpful tips on how you can succeed in your job search too if you're job hunting during this time. It's a crazy time. In the start of the process, I knew it was going to be a tough process because I looked around and I saw how difficult my counterparts were having in this job market. With the consistent layoffs, with companies having lower headcount, I knew that it was going to be a tough job process. I just didn't know how tough it was going to be because I have a few years of experience in this industry. I have six years of experience in this industry, three years as a software engineer, the other three years as a developer advocate. So in the tech industry, I'm coming with good experience but this was by far one of the toughest job search processes I've ever experienced. I felt like I was getting new grad treatment during this time. I wanted to leave you guys with a few tips that really helped me succeed in this job search process because it was unlike any other job process I've ever been through. Before we get into those tips, I wanted to let you all know that I recently launched my tech interview prep kit. This is something you've all been asking me to do for years to provide the resources that I use to land high-paying tech jobs relatively quickly. So I took a really long time to create this interview kit just for you. This kit has my 50 plus study flashcards that I use for behavioral and technical interviews with thorough explanations and code for how to solve these questions, my resume template with instructions on how to write a solid resume, my LinkedIn outreach template that I've used to get referrals, and finally my job tracking template that I use to stay organized during this job search process. Basically everything you need to secure a software engineering role in today's really tough job market. So check it out in the description box below and I'll have it in my pinned comments. So the first tip is that you need to apply early and in volume in this new application atmosphere. What I did is with every single opportunity I made sure I applied within the first 24 hours of the job posting and I also aimed for a very high amount of applications. And this was also very different from how I job searched in the first two months of my job search process. First two months of my job search process I was really really focused on relying on my network for opportunities and I only applied in the first two months to 20 jobs. But I heard back from a significant amount of them so I thought that one of these jobs was going to lead to an offer because this was very similar to how I job hunted in the past. When I did the final round interviews I made it to final rounds for these amount of companies. I ended up getting zero offers even though I was sure I was going to land at least one of these opportunities. So I said you know what obviously I need to do something new. I can't rely on my network and apply to a small amount of applications. I'm just going to apply broadly. I'm going to dedicate myself to applying to 10 applications every single day and hopefully one of these will eventually lead to an offer. My suggestion in this category is to set a daily application goal. I think 10 is pretty good. I would also really recommend that you check out different job boards. Don't only rely on LinkedIn. Also check out job boards like Otta, Builtin, Well Found. And once you see an opportunity make sure you're applying directly through the company's website. I found that I had a higher rate of response when I applied directly through a company's website. Another thing I would recommend is in this whole apply early and in volume I'd also recommend that you stay persistent. There were certain companies that I had to apply five times to five different roles and got rejected from some of those roles before I actually heard back. And it's not uncommon to see that you might get rejected by a company but that doesn't mean you can't apply to more roles. I mean some companies cap that. I would definitely encourage you to continue to apply and apply and apply for companies that you're very excited about. That's what I did for a few companies. Now let's move on to the second tip which is that networking and referrals do still matter in this job search process. Even though I noticed that my referrals weren't as effective this time around as they were in previous rounds. Like in previous application cycles I did rely on my network but almost every referral got me an interview. But in this cycle I found that it wasn't the case. Only about 50% of my referrals actually led to me speaking to a hiring manager which is something that was very different and I hadn't seen before. So as you can see hiring managers are extremely selective even when you're getting a referral. So referrals are not an absolute guarantee to getting an interview which is something that wasn't very common before. In this networking referral aspect I already shot to everyone like if it was a friend's brother, if it was like a former co-worker, if it was a coworker I didn't talk to in like five years I reached out. I just reached out to anyone in my network who I felt like could give me a referral or could connect me with someone who could give me a referral to different job opportunities and it was extremely effective. Even though I know for a lot of people it can be a little cringe. I have a hard time asking for help but it was very effective to get referrals. And not only did I reach out to my first degree second degree connections but I also reached out to recruiters. So if there was an opportunity to and the hiring manager was tagged on LinkedIn I immediately reached out to that hiring manager showing interest, giving my resume and that actually led to quite a few interviews as well. It was an effective strategy in at least allowing companies to see that I was very interested in specific roles. My third tip is definitely you need to optimize your LinkedIn. I know everyone says it but it is true. Like sometimes I would apply to jobs and I would notice that a hiring manager recruiter had seen my page after turning in an application. So recruiters are definitely relying on LinkedIn as a resource to see if they're going to move you to the next round. So make sure your LinkedIn is optimized. It looks great. You have a good picture. You have good descriptions of your roles. The roles match with what's on the resume. Another thing in this optimizing your LinkedIn I would also encourage you to follow managers at different companies, recruiters at different companies because what I found is sometimes those connections were able to make me aware of an opportunity before I found the job listing while doing my daily LinkedIn job search. My fourth tip is you definitely need to tailor your resume and your LinkedIn to different roles. Because I was applying to two separate types of roles I had a software engineering resume and I also had a dev rel resume. I didn't do any more than that because it would just really slow down my like high volume approach. I feel like having two different resumes made me a more attractive candidate for the roles I was applying to because then I could really emphasize certain skill sets that those roles needed. So like if you're having any issues even hearing back from companies maybe the problem is in your resume. For me I had to change my resume three different times before I found a resume that got me a higher interest in this job search process. My fifth tip is that you have to stay resilient and persistent during this job search process. It is extremely discouraging. You need to make sure that you're prioritizing your mental health, your physical health first and then the job search process second. Because you're not going to be able to perform well in interviews. You're not going to be able to stay consistent if you're also feeling mentally unwell and physically unwell. So I tried to prioritize my day and you know I did things like daily walks and taking breaks and time boxing when I was going to study when I was going to apply to jobs. So that it was a very time box portion of my life and I really tried my best to do other things. It wasn't always easy because I was very focused on completing this process quickly but it was important to really just compartmentalize and time box when I would do my job search process and then just also focus on other parts of my life as well. Another tip I would recommend is that you want to be really polite and proactive to recruiters. For me there were so many recruiters I experienced who just dropped the ball. Like it's like they forgot me in the interview process. This was extremely frustrating because this is your job. This is your job to close a client. Why are you just losing applicants? But I can understand from the recruiter's perspective that they're probably talking to so many people. It's really easy to forget about a candidate. For me what I did though was because I was so organized with my job search template that you can find for free in my store front. I knew what jobs I applied to. I knew who I needed to follow up with. I also had a very organized mail so I could always see who I just recently followed up with. After every interview I would just message the recruiter so they didn't forget about me and saying you know what I had a great conversation with this person. Would love to know about the next steps. I made sure I was very very persistent but polite. Persistent but polite so that the recruiter would not forget about me and would just continue to update me on the process. It paid off in building good rapport with recruiters. So for example I got rejected from a company in the final round. The recruiter had other listings and when those listings came up the recruiter messaged me saying hey we have these other opportunities. Are you interested in them? So that was something that was also really helpful because I build good rapport with recruiters by being polite and respectful. Anytime I got rejected with a recruiter I always made sure to ask for follow-ups like what could I have done to improve like get feedback back and I also I'm not sure how many recruiters did this but after if I got rejected from a company or if I pulled out of a round I also would tell the recruiter hey I saw this opportunity would you feel comfortable connecting me with the hiring manager or at least putting my resume up so that the hiring manager could see it. Yeah make sure you stay respectful and you have a polite and positive relationship with recruiters and make sure that you're always consistently following up and pushing yourself along the process and you're keeping track of you know I just did that interview I need to follow up with this recruiter because I'm telling you it's so easy for recruiters to ghost you and forget that you're in the pipeline. Okay so now we've talked about like the application process and a little bit about the early stages of a job search process now let's go ahead and talk about how I felt with passing behavioral interviews technical interviews is going to be a different section of the video. So when it came to really setting myself up for behavioral interviews I talked about it in one of my earlier videos in this series so please go there to see like the strategies I use to really pass through and you know shine during like hiring manager rounds or behavioral interview rounds. One thing that really helped me was before any behavioral interview I made sure to research the roles I was applying to so I made sure that I read the technical blogs that people had released if my interviewer had recently released a technical blog I would read it I would just kind of pay attention to anything the interviewer I had released or anything that the company was just generally at least communicating on so for example there was a company I applied to it was like a platform software engineering position and one of the directors was the one doing the hiring manager around and he had released a blog post talking about something that the team recently did I read it I referenced it during the interview and you could tell that he liked that I referenced it because it showed that I had a lot of interest in the company in that specific team and was very aware of what they were doing and this was something I did throughout my entire interview process I made sure to just show that like I had really done the research and I really was paying attention to what this company was doing and I feel like a lot of people responded very positively to that and showed deepened interest in the company and reflected well on me another tip I have is now for coding interviews so of course you know coding interviews it's I just realized in this job search process that I thought I was okay with coding interviews but now with more knowledge and experience I'm like I hate them I hate them I found the coding interviews this cycle to be pretty hard and it was just like a matter of luck sometimes with some of the coding interviews I feel like I prepped properly like I was paying for a program that really helped me I was doing a lot of practice questions mock interviews which is something I highly recommend in your prep process like I feel like that made the biggest difference but with coding interviews you just have to do the best preparation you can do but after you've prepared you've done all of like the neat code 150 questions and you understand all the algorithms pretty well at that point it's just a luck of the draw you can't control what you're gonna see how your interview is gonna react to you like I can't tell you how many interviewers I had where the interviewer was like doing something else while giving me the interview or if people were asking questions that were unfair like you can just tell that some companies did not train engineers on how to conduct their interviews technical interviews are kind of like a mess right now but you can all you can do right now is do your best in your preparation and hope good luck is on your side and you have the favor on your side and that things will work out for you but for me I noticed in the interview process some of the most popular questions I got were like backtracking questions and graph questions much more than I'd ever seen before so make sure you watch out for that I think that might be the new trend of questions I also found that it was really helpful to go on Glassdoor and like look at people who had recently interviewed at the company and most times they revealed questions that you actually did get asked very often that happens so make sure you look on Glassdoor you look at leetcode you also filter your leetcode list by the company I found that that was actually pretty accurate all you can do is practice the tips I recommended and just hope that you have luck on your side another thing I would recommend in this technical interview process is you definitely want to make sure you're doing your system design questions pretty early in the process like I wish I'd put my system design a little bit earlier because being able to understand system design made me more compelling when I was doing like hiring manager rounds and explaining my projects so I wish I'd done my system design just as early as I was doing my coding prep that would have really saved me a lot of time and been very helpful for me and finally of course with this more technical interview prep also highly highly recommend that you do mock interviews they are the most invaluable interviews you'll get because you'll really understand how to do things in a time box fashion you will really get feedback on how you're communicating because it might seem like you're very clear in your communication but you weren't that clear and you know someone will give you that feedback so I would really highly recommend to do mock interviews early so yeah those are all the tips from this job search process it was a mess but I'm really grateful that I have a job now you know that the process is over and I feel like for me four months wasn't that bad during the four months it felt like hell because I didn't know when it would end but now after it's done I was like you know what it wasn't that bad I wish I'd implemented these tips I told you all earlier I wish I'd been like focused more on mental health and physical health because that does really impact you and like you're like socialized with people I feel like I didn't really do a lot of that because I was so focused on this job search but I'm really happy it's over and if you're on the job search process I'm really hoping that you know things go well for you and you and an opportunity that you're excited about very soon thank you so much again for stopping by and I'll see you guys in the next video