Get Hired: A New Series

Hi! I'm Sam. I've been working as a developer for 7 years. I had worked at the same job from the time I graduated college up until 2 months ago. My workplace situation suddenly became toxic and I had to leave, fast. I was terrified, but I realized that the job wasn't worth losing my mental health over. So without any backup plans, I quit.

I'm happy to say that I've made it out to the other side. I made it through all the studying and the many, many rejections. I've signed a job offer with a company that I'm excited to join.

However, my time job searching was exhausting.

There are so many things I wish I'd known before I started this process. The last time I job searched, I was in college looking for my first full-time job, so suffice to say things have changed since then. There's a lot of advice already on the internet, but resources are scattered and contradictory. I want to share what worked for me and help others avoid making some of the same mistakes I did.

In this series, I will talk about my own experiences on both sides of the interview table, share what the research says you should do, and help you optimize your studying.

About Me

Because I will often be speaking from personal experience, it will help you to know my profile and what kinds of companies I applied at.

Me: A mid-20s white woman with a background in back-end development in Java and more recent experience in full-stack development with JavaScript. Was working as a lead engineer at a tech giant in San Francisco.

Ideal Role: A full-stack lead engineer role at a company between 100 and 3,000 employees, working on a messaging product.

Also Willing to Consider: Especially promising start-ups, back-end roles, other products if everything else was right, less senior roles if the pay was still ok

All in all, I did phone interviews with 15 companies and on-site interviews with 6 of those companies. I got 2 tentative offers and 1 concrete offer. It's a numbers game, y'all.

And Jesus Christ, interviewing is HARD. I get so nervous I can't think straight. Somebody is literally standing there judging your every word and action.

So here's everything I wish I knew before I started my job search.