Advanced Tips for Job Hunting

Most of these things help with the immediate job search, and have huge results in future job searches. Build your skills and your network early, reap the reward for the rest of your career.

Apply Smarter

  • Look up companies that recently got funded and apply to those places even if they haven't posted a opening. They are hiring.
  • Upon deciding to apply to a company, go on LinkedIn and find everyone you know that has a connection to that company. Sometimes you'll be lucky and have a direct contact, but often you'll know someone once or twice removed. Reach out to your connection (or ask a mutual connection to put you in touch), and start a friendly conversation about the company. They may be willing to refer you, or at least make sure that your application has been seen.
  • Additionally, leverage the amazing internet to find the email of someone at the company (recruiter or engineer) and contact them directly. It is usually ok to send a custom cover letter and resume through this method.
  • Go above and beyond for your priority companies. You should be willing to put in some time to increase your odds of being recognized. There are many ways to do this, some ideas include:
    • Build them a project. Use their API for it if you can. It can be a simple single-day project, but it should be professional and polished.
    • Recreate an element of their site in an impressive way. (Copy a page down to a pixel-perfect display, sans-functionality. Recreate their logo in CSS. Add a new feature to a mock-up of their site.)
  • Post your resume on Indeed, Dice, Monster, and other general job boards.

Interview Smarter

  • Before interviews, understand the company's core values and mission statement. Modify personal pitch and answers to behavioral questions to complement what the company wants. Reference company material when it is natural to do so, but don't go overboard--you want to come off as prepared AND natural.
  • Read the company's blog posts if they have one, especially any engineering blogs. This will give you insight into the above point, and will also give you the material for specific technology-based questions ("In a blog post 2 months ago, it was mentioned Company was switching their backend to JavaScript. How has that transition been going?")
  • Ask in advance who you will be interviewing with. Look up each person online to learn about their backgrounds. If you don't get specific names, look up who works on the team you're applying to work with and learn about each of the team members. In your interviews, you can bring up something interesting you noticed about the interviewer's background and ask them about it. You also might find that you have something in common (you're both from the same state or went to the same school or similar) which you could point out to them when you meet.
  • At the end of an interview, ask the interviewer for a coding challenge or if you can build something with their API to send to them.

Network Smarter

In Person

  • Attend at least one meetup or networking event a week. Tell EVERYONE you’re looking. Get their names, follow up on LinkedIn the next day.
  • Go to job fairs, bringing copies of your printed resume and your portfolio on a tablet or laptop, ready to go.
  • Do something memorable to stick in their mind. (Have an interesting story, carry a personal card, etc.)
  • Go to events early, before it gets crowded or the attendees get tired.
  • Contact meetup organizers to ask if there's any way to help out at the event. This may be especially helpful if you struggle to open conversations without an official reason to do so.

Online

  • Twitter is a hotspot for technical recruiters. Use a professional twitter account to follow recruiters on Twitter to get more leads.
  • Find internal and external recruiters on LinkedIn. Directly message them on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
  • Join more groups on LinkedIn. You can directly message anyone that's in a group you've joined. Some groups (i.e. try searching 'Ruby on Rails') have hundreds of thousands of members.
  • Offer to buy people coffee or lunch to pick their brains. Ask if they know anyone else you could talk to. Leave with more networking contacts than you walked in with.

Build Your Personal Brand & Contribute Content to the Community

  • Volunteer at a software-related nonprofit and add the experience to your resume. It will make you look like a professional in the field. For example, teach at RailsBridge or help a nonprofit add a feature to their website.
  • Find open source projects to contribute to. Find these online or by attending meetups. It will take some effort but both recruiters and engineers put a high premium on new grads that have contributed to open source.
  • Build a personal portfolio site, possibly include a blog, without using a template. Do take inspiration from others, make it look really polished.
  • Create professional social media accounts (Twitter is good), regularly post content relevant to the sort of position you're hoping to get.
  • Standardize online handle/username as much as possible across professional social media accounts (github, stack overflow, twitter, etc.), and match your personal website url to that handle.
  • Write posts about coding subjects on a personal blog or LinkedIn. You don't have to be an expert, but you do have to be clear in your communication.
  • Submit good posts to Medium, repost on your social media platforms where relevant.
  • Follow interesting people and repos on Github. Keep up to date with changes, look for opportunities to jump in.
  • Add comments and posts to blogs, forums, Quora, etc. Help people. Build connections.
  • Participate in Hackathons. If you can, win. If you can't, make friends. Add anything worthwhile to github.

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