Starting your tech job search: minimizing stress to optimize what matters

Finding a job is easier than ever, but finding one that pays well — or better yet, that you’re passionate about — is harder than it looks. Whether you’re just getting into tech or preparing to find your next opportunity, here’s a few ways to organize and conduct your search to minimize unnecessary distractions.

Do some soul-searching.

• Figure out what you need/want in your next job, and how that fits into your near-future life plans. Write these values down and consider what’s negotiable and what isn’t. Be able to answer: “if I’m deciding between multiple offers, what criteria will be most important to me in comparing and evaluating the packages?” Hint: very few people can thrive on money alone, even temporarily.
• Yes, if you’re in a tough spot and need a new job ASAP, this sounds extraneous. But investing an hour to reflect on what you need to flourish at work can save you many future job-seeking hours if this one doesn’t turn out how you expected.
• These criteria are mutable as your life circumstances evolve, but knowing clearly what you value most for your next role helps you weigh your options later on in the process.

Consider your timeline and schedule.

• How much time do you have to interview, both in hours/week and weeks before you want to start your new job? Account for phone calls, video interviews, onsites, take-home assignments, but also applying, studying, scheduling interviews and tracking progress. Most tech jobs schedule interviews during M-F, 9–5 business hours.
• Don’t forget your obligations outside of work. If you have the support of a partner, family or friends, now may be the time to ask for temporary help with some of your usual responsibilities (such as meals, chores, yard work, school pickups, etc.). If you’re on your own, anticipate what you can.
• What’s the right number of companies to apply to? There’s a reason some say interviewing is a full-time job! Interviewing is stressful enough… don’t add to it by applying to more places than you can handle at once. The right number will depend on your circumstances, but even the most dedicated job seeker with no other responsibilities has a hard time gracefully juggling more than 10 companies at once. That said, make sure your number is more than one so you have the chance to consider multiple offers.

Brainstorm a list of companies.

• These should be companies you feel neutral or good about in terms of your willingness to work there (aim for 5–10 at this stage, but revisit if you need to). Maybe you know someone happy at that company, or you use the product, or your last job used them as a vendor, etc. Note there are many amazing places to work that aren’t on the average person’s radar. This exercise just gets the process started where you have a connection already, either through people you know or a product/service you find useful.

Do your research.

• Look up each company’s career pages from your list. Find out their location(s) or if they support remote employees. Check for the role you want. Eliminate any company that doesn’t fit your non-negotiable criteria (i.e. a specific city if you’re not able to relocate, or no openings for the role you want). Then read the career page and see if how they describe themselves and what they build sounds good to you — do their office pictures look like a place you’d like to work? Does the website copy use language that seems appealing to you?
• Read the job description of your desired role with an eye to your values. I can’t tell you what to look for… the same job may be great for you and awful for someone else. But the more in touch you are with your values, the more you’ll notice red flags in job descriptions that don’t match those values. Let’s say you prioritize work/life balance and a company sells a “work hard, play hard” atmosphere: that may signal a value misalignment, whereas “work smarter, not harder” may be a great sign. If you find more than a few red flags (or a non-negotiable one), decide if you’d still like to invest time applying to that company.

Prepare your applications.

• Review the job description carefully for each company. Are there instructions? Even if not an explicit list, some say they prefer cover letters, certain resume details or file formats, etc. Yes, these are a few of many hoops to jump through, but jumping shows you read the job description/are detail-oriented, and often helps meet their internal systems’ needs. Many recruiters regretfully ignore a garbledegook application because the file type submitted wasn’t supported.
• Cover letter is debatable. Mostly it depends on the role/company. The universally worst are copy/pasted, too long, repeat the resume in paragraphs, and the candidate forgot to switch the company name in every mention. That wastes everybody’s time and detracts from your application. Average cover letters are a modest length, declaring a candidate’s interest in that company and something they’re excited about working on. The best are harder to define but at a minimum are customized, addressed to someone on the team likely to review it, and craft a narrative that adds to the resume detailing how that company’s values match the candidate’s.
• Make sure the file name on your resume includes the job title (abbreviated is OK) and month you apply. Even if you skip this step, triple check the file name is never “resume.pdf” (your recruiters can thank me later). The good news is you won’t be the only one, but that’s not a distinction you want to share.
• I’m skipping the “write a resume” step because there are too many ways to write them, lots of examples, and I have Strong Opinions on resumes I’ll share another time. My quick advice though: one page only, no typos, use a PDF that preserves clickable links if you use them (i.e. to a LinkedIn or Github profile, or any live technical projects), and keep distracting styling and fonts to a minimum — no photos, three or fewer font sizes, and test that the file is both printable on the worst-quality printer you can find and readable digitally by e-readers and other accessibility tools.

Apply!

• Referrals: If you know someone who works at a company on your list, send a resume/cover letter (if applicable) directly to your contact first, making sure to send a link to the role you’re interested in and thank them for the referral. Many companies treat referrals differently (and better) for both employees and candidates alike — giving employees perks or bonuses, and reviewing referral candidates before any others!
• Meetups/recruiting events/career fairs: If you have time, another way to climb toward the top of the pile is to attend events hosted at your list companies’ offices, usually on weeknights. Most will have a recruiter or software engineers eager to accept resumes. These are also great networking opportunities for referrals elsewhere. Career fairs are far from ideal and more chaotic, but companies are also likely to review those applicants before those received online because they invested time/money to attend. If you attend a fair: come well-rested, bring water/hand sanitizer/snacks/resumes, and research the companies visiting ahead of time (and the roles available) so you can focus your efforts.
• Anonymous interviewing sites: such as interviewing.io are a really promising new frontier in hiring software engineers at all levels (they didn’t pay me to say that). This platform skips the time-consuming dance of getting noticed — you know, all that work preparing and submitting an application — and offers a low-pressure, anonymous practice playground with real interviewers. If each party responds positively, both de-anonymize and you pass to the next rounds. Worst case, you get some practice. But it’s not perfect yet: as a newer platform, not many companies are participating yet and it might be difficult to find an interviewer in your specialty (unless it’s backend). By design the first interview focuses on technical skills. That’s not a bad thing, just don’t forget to assess your interviewer for signs their company shares your values since it’s an abridged version of their interview process.
• “Let the employer come to you” sites: such as Triplebyte and Hired (and for college students, Piazza Careers). I don’t know enough about each to compare them in great detail, but I welcome feedback from those with more experience! Both appear like a talent agency but in different ways — if you pass Triplebyte’s technical interviews, you advance to their partner companies; Hired seems more like a reverse job-listing site, where the candidate is listed for employers to contact exclusively through the platform. This can be quite convenient by centralizing scheduling and tracking your status, but not every company pays for these platforms so it likely won’t replace your entire job search.
• Aggregated job-listing sites like Indeed, Monster, AngelList: These are also perfectly valid and can be very effective, as long as you have the time to spend sorting through the results. It can be tempting to cast a resume to the sea and wait... I’ve spoken with candidates using these sites who were contacted by several dozen recruiters in the same week! While flattering to get so much attention, it was far too many to juggle simultaneously and made evaluating the right opportunity nearly impossible. If you choose this route, I cannot recommend a spreadsheet enough. Another option is to use these sites for research and brainstorming companies to apply to.
• Direct online applications: I also call this “waving blindly to the ether” because sometimes it’s about as effective… some companies only have interviewing capacity to consider candidates from targeted sources like referrals and events, so they may rarely review their online applications. You can improve your chances by searching on LinkedIn for someone who works there in the role you want. Send a nice message asking some questions about their work and mentioning you’ve applied… just be sensitive to the fact that this is borderline spammy and some employees get inundated with these messages. In other words, don’t expect a reply, but it can still help if that person is impressed enough by your message/profile to forward it to the recruiting team.

Record your progress.

• Keep a spreadsheet with columns for each company and role, the date you applied, any contacts, dates they reply or when you have scheduled interviews, and anything about the role/company/application that can help you keep it all straight when things get busy (later, you can add offer details in additional columns). You may later decide to apply to another round of companies, and being able to calculate the average pace of the process will help you schedule your time more effectively.

And you’re off to the races!

• Depending where you’re located, you might get replies in as little as a day or two… elsewhere, or at certain times of year, can take longer. Large companies usually take the longest, both to initially reach out and between stages. One week between stages is common, but companies who can move quickly usually will if you tell them you’re in a hurry.
• Keep an open, cordial line of communication with your primary contact. At many companies that’s your recruiter; at others it’s whoever had time to run the hiring process for that role.

TL;DR: Did you find this helpful? No? Feel free to send polite feedback either way, or reach out to learn more about getting help with your own job search or improving your company’s interview process. I’m on the Internet on Twitter: @keeterooni or LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/krista-lane/.

About me / why I write this kind of stuff: I used to be a technical recruiter and intern program manager at Yelp. Over years of reviewing evaluations and talking with candidates/interviewers/interns/mentors, I noticed a sizable gap between how tech companies describe and execute interview processes and employee programs. This gap means candidates and employees who succeed often do so despite, not because, of the employer’s efforts — and this is worth addressing for more than efficiency’s sake.

I mediate between these worlds to narrow those gaps — by helping software engineering candidates find their best roles and prepare more effectively, and helping employers optimize their interview processes and employee engagement.

I’m based in San Francisco and a sucker for public transit, tasty cheese, fun facts and juicy novels.