What a year it's been so far, right?

It's been a wave of different emotions in tech right now with the economic downturn, and thus this blog on how it went from this 👇

To this 👇, from my own perspective.

Getting to the offer stages was quite the journey and I'll try and answer some questions and what I think worked or didn't work so well in the search.

The Preparation.

The Resume/CV. This is where it all starts, highlighting skills and project impact in quantifiable means. This may feel like an uphill task but I recommend documenting or taking notes of things you've been working on as they happen and summarising it after a few weeks or months and tailoring it to fit your resume or CV. Also using tools like chatGPT to phrase or summarize info to fit a resume could be something worth looking into. I wasn't a fan of writing CVs but they also helped a bit when stating why you'd think a role suits you e.g. you've worked on the technology or a similar initiative in a previous role and think they'd benefit from your skills, puts you a step ahead from other people applying,

Opportunities. You have your resume ready but where do you send this? Who do you send it to? I started by making it known to my networks that I was looking for a job which brought about a few referrals, also being involved in one or two tech communities brought about referrals from people with whom we hadn't even interacted before but by just being visible. I also had a list of various job sites 👇

Reaching out to recruiters and keeping tabs on some of them helped as well. A lot of emails and phone calls were involved here, being the occasional introvert and a Gmail user, the use of smart replies and Google Workspace calendar helped a bunch in coordinating all these calls and reducing some cognitive load that comes with the constant context switches I had to do.

My previous employer also shared a list of affected employees as well as previous colleagues increasing reach to opportunities outside your usual network :).

Attending conferences in your domain, I got one of the job offers after attending Droidcon and kickstarting an interview process with the team. Conferences and events are also a nice way to keep tabs on the company and know what they are working on and be aware of any new opportunities early on.

The Interviews.

Different companies approach the interviews differently based on a lot of things from team size/composition, stack, and many other variables.

Some interviews will run for weeks others days, but in both situations, it was important to know what I was looking for and what I could compromise on.

Personally, I have a document in which I keep track of such things, benefits I am already getting versus what I'd like to have or what would be nice to have, and some questions I would ask a company I am interviewing with, that helps stay aligned and filter out places I would thrive in.

Research on the company and culture and also talking to people working there is one way to know all these away from the interview environment.

On domain-specific tasks, specifically the technical interviews, some companies don't mind using Google Search and AI tools like co-pilot, I would take advantage of that for repetitive tasks and some technical assessments.

Being familiar with the tech stack on the job description also helps, more so for senior roles, You don't have to know it all but I usually aim for at least 60% of everything listed, unless it's just outrageous.

The Offers.

And you've finally done it 🥳 , had a polished resume, aced the interviews, and got an offer or offers :). It's usually standard for them to give you some time to think about the offer, in my case, I had multiple offers and I was open to everyone about it and this is because it helps both sides plan effectively on the next steps.

Multiple offers can feel overwhelming or confusing but if you know what you are looking for from the get-go it helps narrow things down, it may also give you an upper hand in negotiating and providing feedback to those you didn't proceed with.

Anyway, that was my 2 cents on my recent job search. I wish you a fruitful search and if there's anything extra you'd want to know or for me to expound on let me know :).

Cheers 🥂

LinkedIn | Github

Extras.

Some questions I got and have answers to.

1. How do people apply for remote jobs given that some may explicitly say that they want you to be based on their country? How do you fill in those questions of "Will you now or in the future require Visa sponsorship?" and actually get the role?
   I guess if they are explicit about location they have their own reason, Unless you notice they have colleagues in a region similar to yours, you can ask and be lucky if they make an exception. On visa sponsorship, if you are not from the country or region and require a work visa and don't have one you definitely require that and your answer will most probably be yes.

2. How do you evaluate your salary expectations as a first-timer?
   Asking around helps and is much better if you have someone working in the company of interest, There are sites for this as well, check out Levels, and Glassdoor. You could also try extrapolating from your monthly needs if all else fails.

3. As a first-timer, how do you actually stand out especially considering how competitive the application process is?
   I think the key thing is showing your willingness to learn and that you can adapt, You could have a personal portfolio of projects to volunteer experience.

4. What kind of interviews did you go through and what to expect especially from the technical ones?
   The common stages were recruiter screening, and going over your experiences, they usually looked out for some specifics probably handed down from the hiring manager or team.

   Then meeting the hiring manager/team and some technical talks happen, then a technical test, the technical test can take up multiple forms. Some may require Data Structures and Algorithm, others may bring domain-specific questions to solve, others may request a project you've done, others may give you specifications and expect you to build something and some may mix it all, it's important to seek clarity at the start of the interview process.

   From here it's usually meeting different stakeholders or other teams/people you would interact with on your day-to-day job, this assesses communication, collaboration, team/company fit, soft skills, etc.

5. When building projects, how complex should they be to stand out when applying for a job?
   Personally, I believe depth teaches you more about working with projects long term than short multiple one-week projects, you get a glimpse of what it means to maintain software and add features to it. It doesn't have to be necessarily complex because some technologies you may probably never use or have such niche uses or are used by specific companies and chances are you'll learn on the job.