I'm starting this discussion to generate ideas for fallback options for finding development work, meaning places that hire quickly but might be low prestige, low pay, boring, contract, stuff like that. Recruiters might seem to be an answer but I haven't had much luck there: very little inbound traffic or response to outbound applications. I might just not be using them correctly, so any advice on working with recruiters might be helpful.
Thanks in advance on behalf of everyone struggling to find work that might find this sort of advice useful.
While I do write code, I'm more of a Cloud Architect and I get multiple recruiters contacting me each week. When it's heavy, I get multiple messages per day.
The majority of the positions are remote and while I reject most of the offers due to various reasons, if I were desperate for any job, I think I could get one within a few weeks.
It's my understanding that software developers/engineers are in even higher demand than Cloud Architects, so that's why I'm a little confused.
Are you creating a custom cover letter for each job you apply to? How do you apply - do you submit a form or do you try to get your resumé to someone's email either HR or someone related in the department where the position was posted for? If you're willing to work for low pay, are you sorting job listings where the bad pay shows up first? Are you labeling yourself as a "mid-level" engineer in your application or do you use your cover letter to demonstrate your comfort and experience with the skillset or domain?
Creating a nice cover letter that shows sincere interest, thought and understanding of the industry and the duties that come with the job then getting it into someone's hands who knows who to pass it along to or is a decision maker is your best bet.
Writing all those cover letters though can be draining, I know, I once did it manually and could get one a day done, maybe - never got a job that way. At some point, I realized all the best cover letters stuck to a format, and job listings weren't too different either. I made a spreadsheet that could draft cover letters for me, I'd just add a row for a job listing in my spreadsheet, select from some dropdowns (or add to the list as necessary) and then it would pull some statements relative to those parameters in and generate a cover letter that usually needed less than 5 minutes of editing (the cover letters could get long winded and sound conceited sometimes, good problem to have) to be ready to send out. I also added some job/skill type parameters where I could rank my compatibility for a job, like if two jobs were the same except one used PHP (not that experienced) on the backend, and one used Ruby (more experienced), I'd be able to prioritize the one that was a more likely fit. Once I built this spreadsheet to generate cover letters and rank jobs, I literally got the first job I applied to despite being mostly self-taught and trying to break into the industry. I just sent it to hr@companyiwasapplyingto.whatever and got a callback in 10 minutes too, FWIW. Pretty sure the general gist of this advice applies to any job - send a nice cover letter!
Why do you decline nearly every piece of advice the community here offers? It seems like each time someone makes a suggestion, you come up with a reason why their advice doesn’t work for you.
I’m just pointing this out because otherwise you seem well-spoken and eager to find work, but perhaps you are making things harder on yourself by being inflexible.
Anyways, good luck with the search, I don’t really have any tips but stop calling yourself a mediocre developer and talking poorly about yourself. You may be just as good of a developer and just as smart as anyone at some big tech company, but the other guy had opportunities you didn’t get which led to his success.
Is it drugs? A criminal record? You blew up the systems at your previous employer? You met Jeff Bezos, and then called him a gauche bald-headed jerk?
Just come out with it.
Just like what at least one other person have said, ensure that you've an up-to-date LinkedIn profile. In addition, have someone in recruiting or in software development to read over your resume. Remote jobs could receive many applications because the applicants are not bounded by their locations. With the number of applications, it is easy for the recruiters and the hiring managers to stop reading weak applications even if you are experienced. I used the paid resume review service from levels.fyi.