Job Search

This will probably be a popular article for the coming graudate class, and I’ll try to give my insight and some helpful tips and resources for finding your next position.

Who to Apply to?

Everyone! To find your dream job you will have to apply to as many jobs as you can manage.

Experience and Feedback

My number one reason for applying to as many jobs as possible is that you will get FREE interview experience and feedback. Just as you need to practice shooting a basketball, it help to gain experience interviews as well - how they usually work, programming under pressure, talking for 4+ hour session, etc. And from that experience you will get valuable feedback from your approach. Interviewing is like building a new muscle, the first being the hardest and as you do it more it becomes easier.

I had one interview where I thought I aced it, but unfortunately I didn’t recieve an offer. It wasn’t due to any of my technical feedback, but had everything to do with my attitude going in - where it seemed like I wasn’t excited about the position. And it was true, I think at the time I was pretty high on another offer and I didn’t have my head on straight going into this one and lost this opportunity. You’ll learn in the next section how even though I may have wanted the previous one more, having this would have greatly benefited me.

Two is Better than One

Two is always better than one - in the case of job opportunities. In the example above where I missed a job opportunity, this played against me because I lost leverage with the first opportunity. The company that was hiring for the missed opportunity would have offered 10k more than the previous job (which didn’t really matter to much to me due to other factors).

You can think of applying to positions like a market. You have something that other people want (abilities and time) and you are seeking for buyers. If you only have one buyer, the buyer holds a stronger position because they don’t have to compete with anyone to get you. Introduce another buyer (company) and now you have two people bidding for your value (abilities and time).

You also get what we say is a “fallback” if things go south during negotiation stages for your primary offer. With economic downturns, coronavirus, and who knows what else - the offer isn’t done until the paperwork is signed (and sometimes even after that things can fall apart). I’ve found more confidence when I have multiple offers on the table to make more risker moves during the negotiation phase because of having a fallback.

What to Look for in Companies

Can you describe your dream job? For many this question is hard - many people will say good technology and high pay. As you gain more experience in the field, you will start to develop different values that will guide you through your career. I will offer some perspective from what I learned through my journey:

• I want a company that values me as a person - Choosing a company is like choosing who you want to be your best friend, as you’ll spend a third of your life working (or some statistic like that). You want someone who is going to treat you with respect and value your well-being. When the going gets tough (like coronavirus) you want to know that the company has your back.
• I want a company that aligns with my personal values - This one is probably the most ambiguous and I only found what my values are later in my journey, but when you realize it becomes non-negotiable. This can be in the company or team’s goal, but the effort that you put in should be towards your personal values.
• I want a company that encourages independence - I like companies that encourage me to follow my passions and contribute where I feel are important. This means that the company has great growth opportunities.
• I want a company that has a challenge that I want - Companies are like puzzles looking for applicants to complete them. Each of those job descriptions have different points like - technology, industry, processes, etc that they are trying to fill. Do those sound like something problems that I want to solve. Does ad agencies really tickle my programmer spirit? Do I want to learn PHP to work at Slack?

How to Apply

There are five popular ways that you can apply to companies:

• Direct
• Job Portals
• Recruiting Agencies
• Recruitment Fairs
• References

I highly suggest you use all of them to get your best offer.

Direct

If you know exactly what company you want to apply to, the simplest thing you an do is to go to their website -> careers -> start application. Many times companies want you to go through this process because it hooks into their internal applicant process.

Pros

• Simple
• Companies often prefer this

Cons

• Often don’t get a response back

Job Portals

The next thing you’ll probably do is to look through job portals to find new opportunities to apply to.

Some portals that I recommend:

• BuiltInLA
• LinkedIn Jobs
• Glassdoor
• Dice

Pros

• You can filter to match your values - experience, field, pay, etc

Cons

• Can take a lot of time sifting through all the results
• Lots of duplicates between job portals

Recruiting Agencies

Feeling overwhelmed looking through all these offers? Where there is a problem there is also a solution. This comes in the form of recruiting agencies, whose job it is to connect talent to companies. What they do is sit down with you to identify your values and skill level and then connect you with their clients that may fit that position.

Some agencies in the LA area:

• Motion Recruitment
• Cadre

Pros

• Have someone else filter for you
• Recruiter can manage relationships (like following up to non-responsive)

Cons

• Effort required to loop in a third party into discussion
• Many of these jobs are for contract-to-hire

Recruitment Fairs

If you’re still in college, you’ll probably have some career fairs where you’ll get access to a ton of companies.

Pros

• For those that are better in person, you get the opportunity to make a good in-person impression to stand out
• Ability to ask questions and learn more about companies
• Free swag!

Cons

• Oh so tiring! Make sure you are adequately rested before going in because it is quite a grind

References

The most underrated way of getting an offer is to ask who you know! That may be hard to do in the beginning of your career, but it’s important to build relationships in college (and beyond) because they do pay off. I’ve switched jobs twice in my 6 years of career and both of them have come off of references from college.

Pros

• Easily stand out in the interview process

Cons

• May be hard to ask (But most places give a referral bonus so in reality everyone benefits!)

Organizing the Data

If you follow all the different strategies in the previous section, you may have well over 20 applications out there. Each of those applications will progress at different paces and it can be hard to recall where you are with each interview. That is why it is essential that you manage that somehow.

There are two ways that I found successful:

• Spreadsheet
• Project Management Board

Spreadsheet

This is the tried and true way of managing all the information. Each row will be an interview opportunity and the column will be some category to help you track things.

Pros

• Intuitive
• Filter/sort columns freely

Cons

• Hard to change data format once you’ve committed to something
• Most formats end up with a bunch of dead opportunities in the table, which can feel bad

Project Management Tool

You can use a kanban board like Trello to create columns to indicate the interview stage, and cards to represent the interview opportunity. Every time there is new developments you will update the card with a comment, and if you move to the next stage you will move the card over to the next column.

Pros

• Easy to visualize progress
• Cards that are completed can be archived (if there was no offer)
• Can be easy to add new information to card description

Cons

• Cannot filter by properties

Important Properties

Whatever tool you end up using, you should keep track of the following information:

• Job title
• Company Name
• Contact Name and Info (Recruiter’s phone and email)
• Reference (if applicable)
• Job Link
• Last Updated
• Interview State
• Account information used to apply (login information)

Negotiations

So you went through the whole interview process and you got that glorious call from the recruiter that they like you and want you onboard, now what do you do? I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty bad at this so you’re better off asking someone else about this, but I’ll give you what I know.

General advice - Don’t be afraid to ask

The key thing to understand is that you both spent a large amount of time investing in each other and you both want to make it work. It costs the company time (people to interview you) and money (usually cover the cost of travel and food) to get to this point, so if you decline they’ll have to spend that all over again to find the next person. Have confidence that you both want it to work, and if you feel you are worth more than what they offer - then speak your mind!

Be Practical about what you ask for

What you ask for needs to be practical - if they are offering you 70k and you respond with something that is 50% more (like 100k) that may appear that there is an irreconilable difference between what the company can offer and what you want and the offer may just be rescinded.

Back up your claim

When you do make a counter-offer, support your claim. You need to convince them why they should accept your counter-offer. The most popular way is to use another offer as leverage. If another company is offering you a package worth more, that reinforces your perceived market value and they will try to meet or beat that offer.

Be flexible with what you ask for

I will usually ask for 5-10% more than they offer, and I’ve been turned down many times (I didn’t have a counter-offer at the time). Salary isn’t the only thing that can be negotiated, and many times what I found was vacation was the flexible thing. During one of my job switches I had planned a two week getaway to Southeast Asia about the time that I was going to start. They turned down a 5k salary raise, but allowed me to use their unlimited vacation policy which usually doesn’t activate until 6 months to cover the trip (which probably resulted in about 5k anyways). On my second job change I worked out a 10k signing bonus just for asking.

So I’m sure there are expert negotiation gurus out there, but even simpletons like me can get something just by asking.