I'm keeping a job search diary on my blog(letmypeoplecode.com) |
I'm keeping a job search diary on my blog(letmypeoplecode.com) |
Not sure if you're interested in startups at all, but shameless plug: I recently made a startup jobs board[0], it tracks number of job posts each company has over time and ranks them so you can see how much each is growing.
I've started refusing to take phonecalls from recruiters who cannot give me JD, comp, and remote-friendliness. This basic stuff seems to scare off about 80% of them.
For the general audience, let me drop some advice here that helped me during my job search:
- I knew what I was looking for (remote-friendly tech startups with their own product). I suggest you think this through as well.
- No Linkedin profile! Really, not needed unless want a corporate job. (Though I have a tiny and mostly neglected personal website which is appreciated by most companies.)
- Browse and actively follow dozens of job boards like the one in parent comment. DuckDuckGo is your friend. In a few days or weeks, you'll find out your 'taste' in terms of jobs that interest you and easily filter out mediocre offers.
- Draw boundaries and put your bar high. Know your desired compensation range and ask right away if not indicated. Reject take-home homework, leetcode interviews etc. if you don't like them. The interview process tells a lot about the company culture and you're also getting to know that company, not just the other way.
- Work on your resume! An investment that pays back like wonders. It also makes you much better prepared for interviews. There are some very useful books out there like "The Tech Resume Inside Out". Best $20 I've ever spent.
This way, you have total control in your job search and will have zero awkward HR phone calls. Though I admit that if you're looking for corporate jobs, a Linkedin profile might help. Also, if you're looking for MANGA etc. jobs, you'll need a totally different approach.
Shameless plug: I'm currently working for a no-code process automation tool startup called Process Street (https://www.process.st/), and we're hiring. :)
- Incomplete information is provided purposefully to get you to the next step of the funnel which is a phone call
- They don't want competition to narrow down who their client might be
- Possibly they are trying to lowball potential candidates (has happened to me)
Or maybe... some of them are just simply incompetent. Looking both at my inbox and a several LinkedIn groups with jobs that I run, I do wonder how some of those opportunities are getting any replies.
On the bright side though I have interacted with some recruiters that really know what they're doing. It's not a big group but it's worth remembering who they are.
I keep "Can you please send me the job description and pay rate, so I can let you know if I'm interested?" in a text file, so I can easily copy-paste it.
I also created a web page, to send a link to the most annoying recruiters (https://hellotechrecruiters.com/), but haven't used it - yet.
1. I tracked all incoming offers in a spreadsheet with a column for salary and equity 2. I responded to every incoming lead on LinkedIn with 'what is the salary band for this role?' and 'how did you find my profile? What did you like about it?'
This allowed me to build a distribution of jobs available to me, and then I only ever took calls with the top 1% of those offers.
I must've spoken to 150 recruiters on chat, but I only interviewed for 6 companies and secured 4 offers.
I kept iterating on my LinkedIn based on the feedback from the initial chat interaction and very quickly I was getting really good leads.
I put in about 100h work over a year to get to that point. I still, 3 years later, regularly get offers with >200k GBP base compensation now.
EDIT: I forgot to add a key factor. When the recruiter responds with a salary that is below the top 1% you reply: 'Thank you, but I am currently only able to consider salaries with a base comp of at least X, please get back in touch with me if you find something in that range." - X being your current estimate of the top 1-5% of the distribution.
At Architect level, I think the highest I've seen are around £125K + bonuses.
I'm pretty sure the distribution of salaries are multimodal, even when you discount finance.
Salary aside, IMO the higher paying jobs are also the more attractive ones when it comes to remote work, holiday allowance, and (I suspect) technical maturity.
I asked a few of them recently about simple things like how many were on the team, out whether it's a remote position, and they simply didn't know.
This, to me at least, is a red flag of a dysfunctional company culture, probably siloed and entrenched departments not communicating.
Do you know React? "Yes."
Do you know React hooks? Yes.
Do you know JavaScript? "Well, it is what you use for React."
Do you know JavaScript? Yes or no?
Lots of them just have a keyword list.
So be careful, it could happen to you too!
If you want REALLY bad options, post to Career Builder. Last time I did, I got approached about jobs in insurance sales, door-to-door sales, and cashing checks for forging rings.
Yesterday I got an email inviting me to arrange an interview, wondering if I'd still be available, and asking me for my salary expectations.
Sometimes you wonder how these firms work at all.
For those looking, my experience is that virtually all aggregator sites like efinancial and LinkedIn are black holes for applications. Just find the person who put up the advert and contact them directly. You can often see how many applicants there are and from there you can extrapolate how much time there really is to look at CVs. It's not good, but also it's impossible for all the CVs to be relevant. I've been on the hiring side myself and I can tell you there's a heck of a lot of people who apply for jobs they can't get.
People say a lot of things about third party recruiters but I keep in touch with a good few of them. They have certain benefits, mainly that you can straight up ask them about salary and they know a lot of firms who don't advertise.
I aced the interviews but there was a week between each interview- even after telling the HR about the now nearing joining date. I got a call one day before my joining date at a new company and was told that Twilio would pay about 20% more. I didn't take it. The HR sounded like money would buy anything. Maybe I was wrong. But I feel I did the right thing.
I wrote “How to write a great technical resume” here: https://www.leetresumes.com/blog/how-to-write-a-great-techni...
Sex: Yes, please.
I'll look at my options to control location in the plugin. Right now it's just letting them "optimize" placement.
Mostly, I've had a half dozen blogs over the last 26 years. This might feel spammy because I recently migrated from a static site back to WordPress, and have been slowly adding back old content from that site and the one it replaced, so there's not a ton of content right now.
Diary is interesting, though.
Job hunting two weeks into the first month of the quarter, yikes. This is going to make for an interesting read.