Job Search Tips From Personal Experience

Earlier this year I decided that it’s time for me to look for another opportunity outside the company. The company executives decided on being acquired by Oracle and my decision to leave the company had a lot to do with the fact that I was less than enthused about working for Oracle. Thankfully for me, my job search coincided with what I think is a pretty darn good market for software developers, and I was able to conclude my job search in a relatively short period of time. It’s been 2 and half weeks now at my new job and I’m loving it so far.

Anyhow, while job hunting is still very much fresh on my mind, I thought I’d write about some of my own (actually, most of them are from various books & blogs) job hunting tips:

• Conduct thorough research of the company. Spend time on the company’s website. Get your hands on the company’s products and play around with it. Try to break it. Try to identify weaknesses and strengths. Type in the company’s name (as well as “[COMPANY NAME] sucks”) in Google and see what comes up. Conduct research on the people you’ll be interviewing with via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Conduct research on your potential co-workers. Will you be happy working with/for these people? Find out names of the company’s former employees, especially those who recently quit. Ask your interviewers about why these folks left the company. You might gain some real valuable insights about the company and the organization you’ll be working for. Chances are, your interviewers will NOT tell you about people who recently quit unless you ask specifically for that information.
• Conduct online research of yourself on the web. Are there stuff on the web you don’t want your prospective employers to see? Well, do whatever you can do take that stuff down. Check all of your online content, such as (but most certainly not limited to): Facebook, Twitter, Google+/Google profile page, your blogs, personal website, newsgroups, and anything you might have posted on Stackoverflow.com. Google your name and see what comes up. Again, people who are interested in hiring you WILL look at some/most/all of the stuff I’ve mentioned here.
• Try to schedule interviews with different companies close to one another, which increases your likelihood of getting multiple offers in your hands, which then increases your chances of a higher pay. If you get a call for an interview and you don’t yet have any other interviews lined up, try to delay this interview as much as possible. If you get a call for interview and you already have 1+ interviews in line, try to schedule this interview as close to the other interview(s) as possible.
• Go into the interview process with the mindset that everything is negotiable and that it never hurts to ask.
• Glassdoor.com is your best friend when it comes to conducting salary research. Really, that website is a heavensend for job hunters. It’s also useful for looking at employee-posted reviews of companies but I tend not to trust information as much.
• Network, network, network. Email people you know who work at places you want to work at. Take them out to lunch. Get in touch with that recruiter you really enjoyed working with.
• Don’t waste time talking to bad recruiters. I won’t mention any names here but there are some seriously bad recruiters out there. Some tendencies of bad recruiters are: A) They keep emailing/calling you even when you ask them to stop B) They contact you about job opportunities that sound completely lame and have very little to do with your experiences C) They have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to the job description D) They are insistent on knowing how much you currently make.
• Be nice to recruiters. (well, at least the ones that are good)
• Update your profile on LinkedIn and make it look nice & professional. Use a nice, high quality photo. Treat it like your resume. People who are interested in hiring you WILL look at your LinkedIn profile.
• Review and re-review your resume. Have someone else other than yourself review it.
• Use job posting aggregate sites such as indeed.com. No need to look at multiple places for job postings when you can go to a single place.
• Follow up on interviews. If after you interview with a company they don’t call you back, it does not mean that they don’t want to talk to you again. It might very well mean that they have stuff to work on besides conducting job interviews and that they’ve been busy.
• Keep a log of ALL of your interviews. Here’s a list of some of the information that I keep track of for every single one of my interviews: Date & time of the interview, Name of the company, Names of interviewers and their contact info, Summary of what was discussed during the interview, Questions I asked during the interview.

• 2023 2
• 2021 6
• 2019 1
• 2018 5
• 2017 9
• 2016 25
• 2015 6
• 2014 6
• 2013 15
• 2012 16
• 2011 8
• 2010 13