I applied for 300 jobs so you don't have to.
What I learned after 313 job applications (and 295 rejections).
In May 2020 I was finishing the college in Kazakhstan with Electrical Engineering major. Knowing nothing about actual software development and having no prior internships or any relevant experience with software whatsoever I somehow decided it may be a great idea for choosing it as my career path. Three years later, after about 300 total job applications and 3 companies behind I work as a Senior Software Developer in Bolt, a 100 million user ride-hailing company and one of the main Uber competitors in Europe and Africa.
In this post I want to reflect on job applications process, my main takeaways and key insights about getting ready for your next job search. This post is mostly relevant for Software Developers, but I tried to factor out the aspects which may be common for all corporate careers in general. Subscribe for my newsletter for more creative writing on career development. And check out my previous post where show how to build AI Avatar Generator app step-by-step with link to the code.
Job applications is a skill
First, your application from resume to offer negotiation is a several step process:
Composing and tuning your resume
Finding relevant openings
Filling applications
Interviewing
Offer negotiation
The whole application can be visualized as a funnel and to be able to increase the “conversions rate” each of those steps should be planned and executed well.
Since often job search is not as regular for most people, the application skill is also getting deteriorated over time and when the time comes, picking it up might be quite a painful endeavor. So to keep yourself “in shape” it’s usually a good practice to go and apply for other jobs on the market once in a while. Besides from keeping your application skill sharp applying for other companies have other advantages:
You will know a relevant compensation levels for your position and experience
You can find a new career advancement opportunity, a promotion or simply a more interesting and appealing project or product to work on
I usually apply for a couple of openings once in three months just to keep my interviewing skill sharp and my resume converting.
Speaking about resume…
Iterate on your resume
My first resume sucked and my second did too. During my first batch of applications (~190 job applications in total) on my senior year in college I iteratively changed the design, while getting feedback from applications I sent. Most often it was a binary feedback, either ghost/reject or recruiters would schedule a call. This way i kept the features which attracted recruiters and discarded those with which I didn’t get any feedback.
From about 190 applications on my senior year, 178 either ghosted or rejected me and the remaining 12 “successful” applications (not offers but those where I got an interview) were from the 5-6th iterations of my resume. After all those mutations, my resume looks like this:
It’s important to follow the basic rules while compiling a resume, there are also some specifics for Software Engineers. A good guide for building your resume can be found on Interviews School: https://interviews.school/resume
It’s often much insightful to show your resume to others before applying:
Reddit has a resume roast subreddits for almost any STEM (and not only STEM) field
Telegram groups like SNS are also a good source for an instant resume feedback
Just post a message like “Hi I am student/professional with X years of experience applying to FAANG/other companies and want to hear your feedback on my resume.” and attach your resume as a PDF.
Track your applications
For me the most helpful routine while applying with no much experience was to break the application funnel down into steps and actually analyzing where do I fail the most and iteratively improving those areas. My personal way to do so is via spreadsheet on google:
This way you can see which stage in your application funnel is the most broken and fix it on the go. As you can see my it’s still my little experience on my resume preventing me from getting more interviews, which I don’t think I can fix right away. But still those stats are much much better than a year earlier mostly due to the homework I did while analyzing the feedback which I put on the spreadsheet.
Ask for referrals
Referral is when you are ask someone within a company to tell the hiring manager that they think that you would be a good fit. Most of the big companies and application platforms have this process automated so employees in a company you are applying for can do it through some sort of a web portal. Using a referral will likely increase chances your resume will actually get looked properly tenfold. Sometimes referred candidates do even get a shortened interviews process overall.
Don’t be shy to ask for referrals!
99% of the time employees are monetarily incentivized to do referrals simply because it is way cheaper for an employee to refer someone than to search for a candidate on a market.
I can’t stress it enough but referrals are simply cheat codes for job applications.
There are a couple of ways you can get referrals for a position you are looking for:
Personal connections
Refer me (https://www.refer.me/) - a network for finding referrals globally
LinkedIn - finding people who work in a company and asking for a referral is mostly an acceptable practice given you are well prepared for a position your applying for.
Telegram channels
Discord servers
Wrap up
Finding a new career opportunities might be a daunting task, but with a systematic approach and a few referrals chances for a successful outcome can be lifted drastically (my 2021 vs. 2022 stats above are a proof!)
So don’t be shy asking for referrals and don’t get overwhelmed receiving rejections letters, since one dream offer worth a thousand rejections, even if both are from the same company (I applied to Yandex 4 times before finally receiving an offer).
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