Finding Your Next Tech Job: 12 Optimization Tips

Artist: Jeff Axup, “One Step At A Time”, 2023, Medium: DALL-E on pixels.

Finding your next tech job has gotten a lot easier, but it’s still a lot more difficult and slow that it needs to be. Until better recruiting services evolve, here are some steps you can take to maximize your probability of success while keeping your “find-work-life balance” intact.

UPDATE: APR 6, 2023.
• I have signed an offer for a new position after using the tips listed below.
• Elapsed time from receiving lay-off notice: 63 days.
• From my experience this was faster than normal, and it happened during a period of widespread layoffs and 200+ applicants per position.

Tips

#1: Have a realistic time expectation

• It’s probably going to take 3–6 months to find a job.
• If it’s shorter than that, then good for you. Realistically, hiring processes are very inefficient and manual, and companies don’t realize that their lack of speed is costing them talent, innovation and competitiveness.
• Typical process: Companies post a job, and then often wait 2–3 weeks to start processing submissions. For several positions I was first contacted 4–5 weeks after applying. Then you need a week to schedule the first interview with the recruiter, another week for them to kick it up the ladder and get the interview with the manager going. Then another week to do a white-boarding review. Then another week to talk to the c-level approver or key stakeholder. Then another week to decide on the offer and send it. Total time since submission: 8 weeks
• I always ask the hiring manager what their hiring process looks like and a typical timeframe to completion. They usually say “a month or more”.
• There is a great opportunity for a startup to use blockchain, automation, best-practices and quality control to condense the hiring and offer process into a week, but it hasn’t been done yet.

#2: Just Use LinkedIn

• Yes, there are many different job search tools out there, and I reviewed quite a few of them recently.
• Suffice to say, unless you are looking for something very specific, most of the jobs are already on LinkedIn, and they have built out a bunch of related services to do everything in one place. This is a good thing.
• Fill out your full profile in only one place to save time (e.g. LinkedIn).
• Use that profile to auto-generate a resume, and then export it to PDF. Consider how lucky you are to be able to simply export this instead of doing it by hand like we used to.
• Apply for your jobs from LinkedIn and be sure to click the ‘applied’ button after doing so. It will automatically keep track of your application history, and you can get back to the original JD during an interview.
• Considering taking some of LinkedIn’s learning classes which auto-add certificates and skills to your profile upon completion.

#3: Keep the sales funnel full

• Try to apply to 5 or 6 jobs a day.
• I spend a half-hour each night saving a short-list of jobs to apply for (use the ‘Save’ button to create a saved-jobs queue on LinkedIn, and also click ‘hide’ to remove jobs that aren’t of interest in the future.)
• Then I spend an hour or two in the morning applying for them rapidly.
• I keep applying for new jobs until the day I sign an acceptance letter for a position.
• Given the recent layoffs and lack of employer-loyalty, some would say you should continue to monitor and occasionally apply for “perfect jobs” even after you find work again.

#4: Always include a cover letter

• Most application processes include an option to attach or paste a cover letter, and most applicants skip right over it because it’s a hassle.
• The cover letter is your chance to tell a recruiter how to interpret your resume, and for you to stand out from the crowd.
• It is also an opportunity for you to waste a lot of time applying for a position where your cover letter may not even be opened at all. There are optimization strategies for this.
• I keep 4 template cover letters handy. Two are in plain text and two are in a word processor in a standard business-letter format with a picture of my signature at the end. One of each format addresses each of two job roles I am applying for.
• Always use the plain-text version if you can because it’s faster. The good application systems let you “paste in text” for your cover letter. Use that if you can, and then personalize the top bullet point to explain what you like about that particular position.
• If they only offer an attachment, do a quick modification of your formal doc, add something specific about that particular job, export it to PDF and attach it rapidly.
• The whole process of customizing and including your cover letter should take 1–2 minutes max. You need to get on to your next application, so keep this brief.
• Some application processes hide their cover letter option (e.g. sometimes you can upload more than one attachment in the resume section), and sometimes you can add a sentence to the top of the auto-imported plain-text of your resume, to personalize it for a position.

#5: Don’t create a custom resume design

• Take it from a designer: custom resume designs / layouts / styles are a complete waste of time. They frequently make the resume harder to skim, and they don’t match the standard format the recruiters see every day (e.g. the auto-profile-export from LinkedIn).
• Save yourself a lot of time and just use a simple functional resume format. Spend your time on concisely describing your work history, projects, and outcomes instead — or focus that creativity on your portfolio.
• Resumes constantly need to be updated as you get feedback from recruiters or find new things to add. LinkedIn makes this easy because you just add it once to your profile, and then export a new resume PDF that automatically includes it.

#6: Use a password manager to auto-form-fill

• Stop typing in the same thing manually on every application you fill out.
• Password managers such as 1-Password store this information centrally and then they can auto-fill it into the application. Some browsers support the same function as well. (Pro-tip: MacOS offers keyboard auto-complete codes where you type a code and it auto-inserts a full string such as your phone number or postal address.)
• Unfortunately they don’t store answers to all the mandatory ‘gender / disability / veteran’ questions, (something LinkedIn should be doing), but at least it reduces the amount of typing you need to do, and the time necessary to complete the submission.

#7: Create highly focused job alerts and process them nightly

• LinkedIn is getting better about supporting more types of filters on its job search queries. They are not as accurate as they should be, and some filters (e.g. company size) don’t exist yet. Generally it’s good to fine-tune and tweak your search query several times on the main job search page, until you get a low false-positive rate in your search results, and then save that for a daily alert.
• You can either have the alerts delivered each day by email, or you can remember to check your LinkedIn mobile app each night. I rapidly check that each job is remote, the company description, and preferably the salary range, before saving it to be applied for the next morning.
• If you find yourself wading through too many matches, or lots of matches that aren’t a good fit, go back and revise your search queries for the alert to reduce your time spent on this activity.

#8: Consider applying for remote-roles only

• We live in a very unique post-COVID time period where many tech jobs are 100% remote and many companies are “remote-first”. This is the golden age.
• Unless you happen to magically live next door to every job you are applying for, or want an excuse to move to a different city, do yourself a favor and boycott in-office jobs. They will learn eventually.

#9: Ask early about salary range, fully-remote, PTO, bonus

• Salary range is increasingly being posted directly in the JD or job site listing, and it is actually legally required in many states. Many recruiters are still hesitant to discuss it, but they are required to. More importantly, it is pointless to spend time applying and interviewing at a company where you don’t think the pay is sufficient.
• While you’re at it, you can confirm that it is fully remote (sometimes it is actually hybrid) and see if they have an “unlimited” PTO option or a bonus plan.
• When recruiters contact me out of the blue on LinkedIn I have a standard copy/paste response that asks for all of the above information via messaging. Frequently I can rule them out immediately based on the response and not waste more time on it. Phone conversations are time-wasters and you only want to spend that time on positions you have already chosen and applied for.

#10: Refuse to answer form-questions about expected salary

• If the company you are applying to is adhering to state law (in most cases), then they should already have listed the salary range in the original JD. If they did this, then they would not have to ask you what your desired salary is.
• There are many power-imbalances in the hiring process, and they almost all go in the favor of the hiring company. Keeping some power to yourself is wise, and salary expectations is something you can discuss once they get to know you better. Just enter 0 or 1 in these form fields if they make them required.

#11: Keep yourself busy with a side project while you apply and interview

• Applying, interviewing, researching companies, and getting seemingly endless rejection notices is draining.
• Protect your mental health by only doing it for a few hours each day and having a good side project and exercise habit. Perhaps you like writing a blog, or learning about new tools for your job, or going hiking. Make sure you have those going in parallel with your job hunting.

#12: Time is money — optimize your time spent

• If a company uses a terrible application tool (e.g. Workday) which slows down your application process to the point of ruining your day, just opt-out. Apply for a different job with that 10 mins instead. If a company is painful and bureaucratic to apply to, it will likely be painful and bureaucratic to work for as well.
• If you find yourself agonizing over the wording of a cover letter — don’t. Just write something decent, submit it, and move on to taking the dog for a walk. There is a cost/benefit to time spent.
• Try limiting your application time to 2 hours in the morning or evening, and a few hours to developing your skill set in some way, and then use the rest of the day to enjoy life and get some exercise. This will help you keep a healthy and energetic state of mind during interviews and talking with recruiters.

Bonus Tip: Once you start interviewing, follow these rules

• Plan your interview for 10am or later (so you don’t have to rush and can prep beforehand).
• Exercise for an hour prior to the interview (gets your energy up and mood positive).
• Briefly review the company and people you will be talking with for an hour prior to the interviews starting.
• Prep an “elevator pitch” for yourself that focuses on your recent role and highlights all your key selling points. Try to work it in when they ask about what you have been doing recently, or when the topic comes up.
• Set up your notes with the names of the people you will be talking to, and questions for each of them.
• Try out the meeting link an hour before. If someone is already on, just log out again. This avoids technical problems or late starts for your interviews.
• Take 20 mins before the interview to relax, lower your heart rate and read or play a game. You want to be calm and collected when you start.
• Take limited notes during the interview for any questions that are asked, or questions you want to follow up on. Keep it minimal, and your attention on the interviewer.
• Always be enthusiastic about the job and their product — never let your guard down.
• At some point, ask the interviewer about their pain points, and see if you have ideas for helping them solve them based on your experience.

Summary and Conclusions

Finding a new job rapidly is an equation:
time / application * number of jobs applied to (that you would actually want to do).
Minimize the former and maximize the latter.

Only after getting a “hit” (a company interested in you) do you start investing more of your valuable time. It is not efficient to invest time thoroughly researching companies that may have zero interest in you. Find a match, and then double-down.

Arguably, all of this could be automated. The LinkedIn “personal agent” should ask you a bunch of detailed questions about types of jobs you like, title variations, salary ranges, locations, company size, detailed industry categories and product types. Then it could predict if you would actually choose to apply to the job. With your prior permission, it should be able to go ahead and submit new applications for you automatically, and then notify you, and keep a record. There is no reason the application process should be a manual daily browse, and a manual submission of the same set of questions over and over — so we are all awaiting a better hiring service that doesn’t waste our time and miss excellent candidate matches.

I have covered some of the tips I have personally used to optimize time spent on searching for new tech jobs, and which I recommend for others in the same situation. It is easy to stress out about not having a job, and easy to waste an incredible amount of time on the problem — but it is not necessary if you have a plan and stick to it.

Do you have other job application tips that worked for you?

My opinions are my own and not related to any current or past employers. You should make your own life, design and investing decisions. I hope you find my ideas thought-provoking.