In case it matters, my background is largely in various QA and product roles, most recently transitioning from project management to product management.
Are the traditional places like Linkedin and Indeed the best places to upload resumes, update skills, etc.? Do I need to fully dive into the job-hunting waters and network with recruiters to get a good idea of where I "stack" so to speak?
Recruiters get a lot of scorn, but I've had good experiences with them as long as you understand their incentives. They usually get some percentage of your starting salary, so let's say they make 15k if your offer is 100k (making up these numbers, but probably in the ballpark. Also, they only get paid if you stick around for at least a few months). If your offer is for 120k, they might make 3k more, so they have some incentive to get you a higher salary, but really, their incentive is to close as many deals as possible. Better to close two deals for 15k each then to drag out one deal for 18k.
As long as you understand that their incentives are somewhat aligned with yours but not completely, you might have a good experience with recruiters. I've found some who are great and many others who suck. But the good ones will get you in the door with the right people and guide you through the interview process.
I also very much hate how people keep trying to turn it into Facebook. Stop it. Get your validation somewhere else.
Now with that said, I've found almost all of my recent jobs via LinkedIn. It's the first place I go when I look for work. Recruiters will hit you up once you have at least a few years of experience.
The longer answer is somewhat unrelated. If you never really interviewed or applied after college, it's going to be crappy if you take all the resume/application/interview classes seriously.
On the resume part, fill up your resume/LinkedIn profile. If you've done 'various QA and product roles' and 'project management to product management', make sure to write them all down as separate experiences within the same company. With every experience, add a start and end date, doesn't matter if they overlap or if you don't know exactly, it doesn't matter. Also, add the technologies, skills and other relevant info per experience. This way, you show growth and broad knowledge.
On the application part, I have noticed that a warm entry is the best. E-mail a recruiter with a question about a role anything is fine. Their response will tell you a lot about the company. Sometimes they ask you to just send your resume and set up a call. These calls are a much better way to introduce yourself than a cover letter. Sometimes a cover letter is necessary though, if it is, at least write something honest. You can also just pick up the phone and call a recruiter, that also works sometimes.
On the interview part, my most important advice is that it's a two way street. Not just the interaction, that's what they teach you at school. It's a two way street in the fact that the company should also be somewhat trying to convince you to work there. Especially because you have skills that are sought after. So don't feel like you have to impress the company too much, be yourself, be honest (of you can't answer a question, say that, don't make something up) and think of it as a conversation, not an interview. That can really help with the nerves too.
Finally, don't get discouraged. There are many shitty HR departments, shitty manager, shitty companies and of course, shitty interviews. If that's the case, just realize it's them not you. You've dodged a bullet by seeing that and you can continue to the next interview. I once rejected an offer because the interview process gave me such a bad vibe, that I couldn't see myself working there. And beyond shitty interviews, sometimes you're just not a good fit for a roll or company and that's fine too.
- Yes LinkedIn is useful, but not in the way that you think. The job application function in particular seems to be a black hole. I've never heard of anyone even hearing back from any employer, and I did try it a few times myself as well. What it does do is it tells you who to get in touch with to try to get a job. Certain recruiters have the current vacancies, and you can see who they are. Talk to them directly, either by chat or by phone, and get your USPs in there immediately.
- Indeed, monster, etc I don't know much about, most of the financial jobs I look at aren't going to be there. I did use efinancial, but there the strategy is the same. Don't submit your CV, find the person who is listing the role, get a hold of them.
- Generally independent recruiters seem to be the best source of leads. They get paid for placements, so they're always calling with suggestions. It's frustrating if you aren't the right profile, because they want an immediate sellable candidate, but if you are the right person, they can open doors that normally are just total blanks.
- LinkedIn is where you find all those recruiters. Whatever your specialty is, there's a recruiter for you. Go and find them, talk to them, see what they have. Don't forget to cater for the buzzword bingo, the recs will search for common tech terms.
- I also cultivate longer relationships with recruiters. A coffee now and again is not such a bad time sink, and you hear a lot about who is doing what through the recruitment people. Sometimes they phone me and ask actual technical questions, like "how does this trade work", and they feed it back to their network.
My anecdata as a PhD engineer: my first job out of college came from putting my info into a faceless corporate careers website. I also got a competing offer through LinkedIn. My current job at a little <100 employee company was obtained through a recruiter on LinkedIn. When looking a few months ago I got another offer from a corporate careers website.
I felt pretty useless fresh out of college, but once I got my first job, I started getting messages from recruiters on LinkedIn fairly regularly. I'd be interested in how people do their due diligence in checking the authenticity of LinkedIn recruiters!
As for indeed, when I used it 5 years ago to get my first job out of school, it didn't impress me. I didn't get any leads from it. Zip Recruiter I think is an actual scam.
It's creation pushed me out of niche job boards. I imagine it will do the same to Indeed, and LinkedIn. All the major job boards syndicate jobs there.
Let the recruiters come to you. Optimize your LinkedIn profile so you get incoming traffic. Make sure keywords that a recruiter would search for are on the profile, in the body and skills section. As an example, a recruiter is less likely to search "software engineer" (too many hits), but rather might search "Python" to get a narrower result, or even something more narrow like "Numpy" to reduce the noise. Also be sure you have a fair amount of connections, which expands your ability to be found. There are additional settings.
Working with a couple recruiters can be useful if they are good at what they do and aren't just looking for a quick buck. You should be able to tell the difference (are they asking what YOU want, or are they just pitching every job to you and hoping you agree to be presented?).
Also use LinkedIn for outreach. Did you see a job posted somewhere that interests you? Write a short message to a recruiter at the company on Linkedin (instead of applying) to find out how to get some dialogue going.
Source: Former tech recruiter that now writes resumes and gives job search advice with a focus on tech.
I think linkedin is another good resource, yes. I know that when I interview people, I always check their linkedin profiles for their previous employment, skills, recommendations, etc.
The last few times I've looked for a role I've just googled for companies I'd like to work at and browsed their careers pages. If you have specific things you're looking for (eg more "I want to work for one of these companies" rather than "I want to join any company within these criteria") then going direct can work very well. Companies seem to like candidates who approach them too because it saves them a fortune in recruiter fees...
I didn't understand what these job classes meant three years ago when I was getting frustrated, and was surprised that I could find a job within a week. Panic really hit me when it dawned on me that I had given up a pure developer job for a pure on-call pager rotation job. I learned a lot very quickly from that screw up.
It was a pretty smooth and quick process but that was about a year ago - I heard rumours they ran out of money and turned into a Linkedin clone since so YMMV (would be interested in peoples’ recent experiences in case I need to look again).
I do get quite a few messages from recruiters on Linkedin but I get a feeling they don’t read my profile closely before messaging. Some are clearly automated (catch these by including an emoji in my profile name).
That said, as an experienced person with a large informal network, every job (only a few) since a long tenure one straight out of grad school has been through people I've known--in the majority of cases someone very senior at the company.
Indeed or similar are so basic that if you're lucky you will get an email reply from the company. Is less noisy than LinkedIn.
I hope one day the process will be simple and without recruiters in the middle. Nothing against them, but are mostly 0 technical and you have to take calls where they read you a company presentation but they don't know nothing really about the company and nothing about you. So what is their utility?
I prefer to speak directly with the company. And I don't like unwanted calls, and I don't like being ghosted (especially if I invested more than 20 mins on your company).
I read this article few days ago, 100% correct https://batsov.com/articles/2021/11/03/a-note-about-recruite...
I was active on LinkedIn for years but it got me in touch with so many bullshitters I felt I was being dragged down and becoming a bullshitter.
I prefer to walk in to a building and shake hands with CEO/CIO without prior invitation. This has landed me my last 2 (serious) jobs, both of which have been fantastic.
So I would say using LinkedIn in this way seems to be working well: setting up your profile as well as you can, that should make it so you receive endless messages from recruiters. Then when you're looking for a job, just respond to the last messages you got.
I've had a lot of luck on AngelList personally. I find more creative interview processes and often you'll get to speak with the C-Suite very early on. Because, you know, startups.
I have several friends who have had luck on hired.com, but I haven't tried it.
Generally speaking, in nearly twenty years, I've had exactly two gigs that weren't based on a reference from someone I knew working at a place. The two that weren't a reference was 1) An actual quality recruiter got through the noise on LinkedIn and offered a lucrative one year contract, and 2) was contact directly (did not apply) on AngelList by a startup CEO. Cold-applying from the ether is a tough way to get a gig.
Next, hop on LinkedIn. Sort for individual profiles. Try different keywords, industries/verticals/markets. Use titles, ex: CTO, VP or Director of Engineering, etc…
Very quickly you should have a hit list of interesting potential employers.
Now— Reach out to them direct for an exploratory conversation.
Part of their schtick is you have to leave an employee review of your company to access their resources. You can see a lot of comments about different companies there.
I’m surprised not to see a plug here for WorkAtAStartup.com, YC’s job site. It’s pretty great and usually you get interviews with founders.
Since 2012 the whole recruiting and HR world have adopted applicant tracking systems (ATS) which heavily rely upon resume parsing and keywords. You’ll need to basically do some SEO on your actual resume PDF or .docx to ensure that your skills are visible to those systems. Much has been written about it but I’ll say that vanilla formatting and listing specific skills goes a long way to better visibility.
Do prep for coding interviews, especially with a guide like Cracking the Coding Interview. It’s just one of those skills that is another obligation of being a developer in 2021 like knowing git and containers.
Looking for tech jobs in 2021 is a somewhat brutal and dehumanizing process, but on the plus side compensation is unbelievable right now, demand is high, and remote work is amazingly common. It’s a great time to be a nerd. Good luck to you!
On a somewhat related note, if you think that LinkedIn is abused by managers, do check out https://www.shlinkedin.com/ and give it a go. It literally made me laugh out loud.
Tech is a seller's market and LinkedIn is s better shopping window for this kind of market, so all your future jobs are listed in LinkedIn.
Don't know at the executive level, I'm pretty sure that market move trough private channels and in limited times trough a public one.
With LinkedIn, the most effective strategy I’ve found is finding someone who is connected to the hiring manager of a posted open position, and crafting an intro note for them to send on my behalf. Just applying to jobs or waiting to be found hasn’t worked.
Do not use numbers from GlassDoor. They are utterly outdated and misleading for our industry.
I would guess you are probably underpaid by 2-5x at this point.
LinkedIn's bread and butter seems to be spammers in India with addresses from New Jersey.
You will probably not find a good job on LinkedIn. Find niche-specific slack job boards and network with people. LinkedIn is mostly a waste of time. It was shit before Microsoft, now it's diarhea.
I'm glad I will be retiring soon and will never remove a connection for re-posting an Oleg Vishnepolsky post.
Fuck LinkedIn.