Job Hunting In Tech Isn’t Always Easy
That’s why it sucks when you lose your job and have to start the hunt all over again. You start to get wrapped up in resumes and technical interview prep to the point of paralyzing anxiety. You go through round after round after round and get turned down repeatedly during which time impostor syndrome starts to kick in and you wonder was this the right career path for you, Does any of this sound familiar to you? I can tell you it has happened to me. There is no shame in it.
As I have gone through my #CodeLife journey I have had periods where work was abundant to the point where I could sub contract parts and hire help. I have also experienced bouts of drought and financial hardship. It is in these times of famine where I learned the most about time and resource management and efficiency. During periods where I was searching for work I developed a stategy for not only maximizing my time searching for opportunities but also my sanity.
The Work You Do When You Are Not Working Is As Important As The Work You Do While Working
Read that title again slowly and digest what I am saying. If your goal is to try to find an employer in 2020 you have to put yourself out there. If you are not out on social media promoting yourself you are behind the curve. Make sure you have a website and your up to date resume is on there (save it on Google Drive and just link to that) use your website as a brand and let it be known on social media.
You know the vast majority of software engineering jobs are going to give you a technical interview. Spend some time while you are doing job hunting to learn and understand data structures and algorithms. In my opinion the best way to learn is:
- Read/watch videos
- do a small program dedicated to implementation of data structure/algorithm
- Write a README.md file explaining what you did and how it works
- upload to Github,com
By sticking to this you have complimented your learning with content creation. Employers love to see auto didactic engineers as well as content creators because that shows you don’t mind helping others.
Don’t Seek Them Out Have Them Seek You Out
In this day and age you as a software engineer shouldn’t have to put in a ton of groundwork to get a request for an interview. With websites like TripleByte which allow you to take ONE technical coding quiz and hundreds of companies can choose to hire you. One interview to rule them all! LinkedIn and Twitter are always full of discussions from hiring managers, etc about looking for new talent to augment their team so hop in those conversations.
Hopefully these suggestions help you not only in your job hunt but in your overall engineer growth. If you have any questions please leave them as a comment on this article or on the Youtube video. Lastly be sure to subscribe to my newsletter for updates, tips & tricks and more!