Ten tips for finding your next job in tech
Outside of a few internships and other odd job tech roles, I spent my first seven years in the tech industry at the same large company. I know, I know. That may not have been the smartest idea. Trust me, I realize that. When it came time to job hunt, I was completely out of my depth for the application process. All the advice I knew was either advice I’d given candidates applying to my company or advice I remembered hearing when I was in college, but I was no longer in college or even looking for software engineering roles. I needed a new approach.
After a few months of failing my way through the job hunt and talking to other friends in a similar position, I’ve arrived at this list of tips and tricks. While these tips are based on my own experience applying to engineering management roles, I hope the advice is more broadly applicable to any newer career folks seeking out their next tech role.
1. Remember your worth
By the time you start the job search you may already be burnt out at your current job and desperate to change jobs. Perhaps you’ve reached a breaking point and don’t have a lot of energy left in you. Whenever possible, it’s best to start applying well before you hit that point, but that’s easier said than done.
If you do find yourself in this position, reflect on your options. I find reflecting on my options help me feel less desperate and gave me more confidence as I valued my worth in the process. Options can include:
Stay at your job for X more months and use that time to apply and find a new job
Quit your job for Y months and use that time to apply for a new job
Change teams within your existing company
Work with your manager/team to change the part of your job that caused you to reach the breaking point (ex: reassign this project, change your responsibilities, receive more support in X, negotiate a salary increase, promotion, etc.)
The final part is easier said than done and may take some patience, but reflecting on your choices will allow you to pick a path with the confidence that you have backup plans and other solutions if this does not go well.
Next, write down your success stories / top qualifications. We’ll need this later for the resume phase. Think about:
Projects — What are your largest projects that shipped? Your biggest wins? Your proudest accomplishment? The task that you persisted on despite how hard it was
People — Who are the people you’ve helped grow their career or improve in certain areas through your mentorship and coaching
Process — What are the process improvements you’ve led? The changes you’ve driven? How is your team / company better because of your influence?
Data — Is there concrete data you can pull? (Lines of code, number of pull requests, bugs fixed, teams helped, interviews conducted, customers supported, etc.)
Extra curricular work you’ve done — teaching a class, speaking at an event, leading an initiative, serving on a committee
Are you starting to feel worthy of your new position yet? You bring a lot of value and your next team will be lucky to have you.
2. Create Ideal Timeline
Identify when you want to start the job process, when you would want to make a decision and give notice, and when you would want to start your new job. Take into account:
how much time you need to prepare for interviews?
how many jobs you are going to apply to?
how much vacation you have and will you be able to take off full days for interview loops?
(post-pandemic) Do you need to travel for any of these interviews and how long will that take?
Are there any important deadlines coming up at work that you would ideally time your departure around?
3. Know your must-haves
Everyone values different things in their ideal role, team, and company. There is no right or wrong answer as long as you are in-tune with what is the right next step for you.
Consider:
Salary — Are you hoping to get a large raise out of this transition? If you’ve been at your current company for more than a few years, you are likely being paid below the market rate and regardless you probably don’t want a paycut. Identify the salary target that you have and create a range with that target as the lower end of the range. Later in the process you can share this with recruiters if you choose. In most cases I would recommend sharing your ideal range with recruiters. It is not worth your time to apply somewhere that will pay you less than your target salary range. Use external sites like levels.fyi or talk to peers to develop your range.
The main thing you want to be better— Most likely there’s one big reason and several smaller reasons that you decided to start job hunting. Make sure your new company does not have the same issue.
Because you’ve been at your current company for a few years, there are probably a lot of elements of your current role that you really like. Try to enumerate these to get a sense of what your must-haves are.
Examples:
Type of work (specific programming language, specific type of role, innovative work vs. legacy code, writing a lot of code, number of meetings)
Great manager (someone open to feedback, a good listener, someone who will help me grow, someone who supports diversity & inclusion, etc.)
Diversity of the team (other people like me on the team, diversity of age, background, race, culture, etc. The team values unique perspectives)
Opportunities for growth (promotion to the next level, learning opportunities, I can see a future here, people I can learn from, etc.)
Mission of the company (somewhere I would be proud to work, company values align with my values, impacting the wold in a positive way, meaningful work)
Balance (40 hour work week, no expectations to respond to emails outside of working hours, remote work, flexible schedule, able to work outside your country X weeks a year, strong parental leave policies, unlimited vacation vs. set number of days)
Life outside of work (ability to contribute to open source, ability to do pro-bono volunteering, ability to speak at events, or develop a side project, provides visa sponsorship)
Most likely several or all of these appeal to you, but try to narrow it down and rank your priorities. This will help you navigate the job search. The more must-haves you have the longer the search will be, but a more robust search could result in you finding a better role and then staying at your next company longer. It’s a tradeoff.
4. Create your filters
Use your prioritized list to start filtering jobs that meet your criteria.
This can include:
Job descriptions — This will give you a general idea of the type of work, opportunities for growth, and potentially details on balance.
Company websites — This will give you a sense of the mission of the company and life outside of work.
Friends from your network — If you have friends and past coworkers who work at some of the companies you’re considering, it may be easier to ask them casual questions about balance, opportunities for growth, and the type of work.
Interview Q&A — Whether in the recruiter screen, phone screen, interview panel, or even post-offer, you can ask questions to people from the company to learn more about any of your must haves. Craft your question by zooming out and thinking “what would be a sign that a company has this”. When possible ask a question that requires them to provide an example like “tell me about a time when you listened to a a concern from a team member and implemented a change” rather than “do you listen to your team?”)
For your must-haves try to gather data from multiple sources whenever possible. A company’s recruiter or career site is always going to portray the best of the company without a lot of nuance. Asking multiple people’s perspectives on topic, will get you a broader perspective.
5. Write your resume
This can be the most daunting part if you’ve been at your current company for years, but remember this is going to go better than getting your last job because now you have more experience and are an even more desirable candidate. Remember your worth.
If you’ve had multiple positions, teams, or titles in your tenure at the company consider splitting those into different positions to better highlight your past experience.
Ex:
Senior Engineering Manager (2019–2020)
My experience here
Software Engineer II (2017–2019)
My experience here
In addition to your success stories you articulated above, review your LinkedIn page for any bullet points you can include, as well as old performance reviews, past promotion docs, and anywhere else you’ve written about and pitched your experience.
If you’re hiring people for a similar role at your company, review some of the resumes of past people you’ve interviewed for that position and identify what types of things they highlight and what makes their resume stand out to you. Obviously don’t plagiarize someone’s resume, but the best way to get a sense of the industry trends and what companies are looking for for a certain role is to look at current people applying.
Remember your experience is more important than a fancy resume template. Don’t pay for a resume template (you don’t need it) and don’t spend too much time creating a perfectly stylized resume. Your work can speak for itself.
6. Refine your career stories
As part of the interview process and screening process you will need to speak to various stories from throughout your career. Prepare in advance by writing down your top stories and jotting down bullet points, key data points, and other things to highlight. You don’t need to create full narrative stories, but writing down the bullet points will help your recall later.
If you are applying for a management position consider writing down the following stories:
A time you managed a high performer (bonus points if it led to them getting promoted, growing into a new role, etc)
A time you managed an underperformer (someone on a performance improvement plan, someone you coached to improve, etc)
A process improvement you implemented on your team
A few complex projects you led
A time you disagreed with someone on your team
A vision you presented to the team or a roadmap you built out
Your proudest accomplishment as a manager
Your biggest lesson learned as a manager
If you’re applying for a software engineering position, consider writing down the following stories:
A time you delivered a project under a tight deadline
A complex articulate you contributed to including lessons learned, the major wins and flaws of the design, and how the architecture has changed over time
A time you mentored another engineer and they improved
An innovative idea you had (bonus points if you implemented it)
A process improvement you implemented on your team
A few complex projects you led
7. Practice
This is the part where you dig up your algorithm textbook or review SQL queries or review any other functional skills for the technical portions of the interview process. Take your time with this. It’s better to delay the interview process until you’re ready, than miss out on your top company because you were unprepared. If it’s been awhile since you interviewed or you’re interviewing in a new sector of your industry, it may be worth having an introductory call with a few recruiters to understand what rounds you will have in the interview process and the types of skills you need to be prepared for to make sure you’re studying the right things.
In addition to brushing up on your technical skills, practice sharing your stories that you shared above. Ideally you want to get to the point where you can share a story about your past experience without any buzzwords and be confident and concise. If you’ve been at your company for a long time, there are probably a lot of company terms that come naturally to you but will confuse your interviewer. If you’re interviewing virtually, consider how you can optimize your workspace to be comfortable and relaxing while having good lighting.
The best way to practice is to record yourself sharing one of your career stories then watch it back and identify ways you can improve. This is easier said than done, but can be illuminating. You may be surprised to learn that your short overview of your team’s architecture actually takes you 15 minutes which may be too long for your interview.
8. Apply and Stay Organized
There are no shortage of places to look for jobs. You can seek out referrals from former coworkers, apply on LinkedIn, visit a specific job board, seek out specific companies and apply directly, etc.
Personally I chose a job board that was pretty extensive and found more than enough positions there.
Recommended job boards:
hiretechladies.com (This is what I used)
Talk to your favorite past coworkers and ask them if they would recommend their company and if they would be open to referring you. This can be intimidating and you may worry they don’t want to hear from you, but 9 times out of 10 they’ll be thrilled to hear from you (and have a potential referral bonus).
The application process is where things can get very chaotic so stay organized to remember everywhere you are applying to.
I made a simple spreadsheet with the company details to keep myself organized. (Example)
9. Practice Self Care
Remember your worth and return to it throughout the process. Applying for new jobs can bring up a lot of emotions of insecurity and fear of failure, but you have gotten this far and you will succeed at your next company too. You just have to find the right company.
Consider creating a pre-interview tradition to calm your nerves (ex: cup of your favorite tea) and implement simple traditions and post-interview rewards to celebrate making it through the next process. Take breaks along the way and avoid overloading yourself with too many interviews. Schedule at least one night a week to be completely free from job prep. Remind yourself along the way why you are doing this and that it will be worth it in the end.
10. Offer Stage
Many better resources exist about negotiating and managing multiple competing offers. All I will say is return to your motivation, your must-haves, and your worth to guide you through this complex process. Ultimately you get to decide if you take your first offer, wait until you have 5 offers to choose, or play 2 offers off each other. There’s not one right or wrong way as long as you are seeking out a job aligned with your values that meets your must-haves.
Don’t forget to negotiate for more than just salary, you may be able to negotiate a start date, benefits, title, etc.
Make sure to celebrate when you make a decisions and take some time off between jobs if possible. You did it!