My job hunting experience. Thoughts and observations.

Over the past year, I have periodically participated in hiring processes as a candidate. I took part in over 30 technical interviews, completed around 5 technical assignments, received about 10 offers, and, in general, had the opportunity to interact with a significant number of technical and non-technical professionals from various companies around the world.

During this time, I've gathered some thoughts and observations on the matter, which I decided to share with you. Perhaps this will be useful to someone, boost motivation or spark the right ideas, ultimately helping to find the desired job in these challenging times.

I want to clarify upfront that the information presented here is entirely subjective, based on my experience, my circumstances and my understanding of the situation. Your experience may differ.

Does the number of years of experience matter?

I believe it does. Unfortunately, recruiters often prioritize matching candidates based on specific technologies and the number of years of experience with them. I've frequently encountered situations where the first question is: "How many years of experience do you have with [insert any technology]?" I say, "Three." They respond, "No, sorry. We need five." And that's it. No one is going to dig deeper, even if you might have a better understanding than someone with five years of experience. Here's why:

• There are many candidates and recruiters don’t want to spend time delving into details.

• Often, there aren't skilled specialists available to conduct a quality interview and properly assess a candidate's knowledge.

• If it's outstaffing or outsourcing, they just need to resell you to the client at a higher rate.

It's unfortunate because not all specialists are the same and not all years of experience are equal. In my opinion, great and successful products are created primarily by motivated people who are eager, capable, and willing to take responsibility and solve problems - and only then technologies come into play.

Is an IT-related education necessary to get a job?

More likely no than yes. Sometimes I see in job descriptions that an IT-related education is required, but often it’s listed under the “Nice to have” section. I’ve never been specifically asked about it or questioned for details. Perhaps it’s because I do have an IT-related education, which is mentioned both on my LinkedIn profile and in my resume, and that seems to be enough.

Either way, I don’t think it’s a mandatory requirement. I see quite a lot job listings without such a requirement, and I know plenty of people who don’t have an IT-related education yet have built successful careers. The general trend of knowledge being more important than credentials still seems to hold true in the job market.

Do senior developers know everything?

That’s complete nonsense. It’s impossible to know everything - not because you’re not smart or have a poor memory, but simply because you’ve worked with something else or your focus has been on different tasks. Technology evolves rapidly and the requirements for candidates are quite broad, with each company focusing on its own stack.

You need to approach this calmly but constantly strive to learn and expand your knowledge. If you’re rejected, it doesn’t mean you’re not good enough, it just means you didn’t match the specific technologies they were looking for. This mindset helps you handle rejections better, which will inevitably happen and that’s absolutely normal.

Should you prepare for technical interviews?

Yes, 100%! I once heard a saying: "A junior knows nothing yet and a senior has already forgotten everything." Unfortunately, this feels true to me. The amount of information we consume these days is overwhelming, and various details tend to be forgotten rather quickly. In interviews, they often ask about specific details from documentation.

Understanding how something works doesn’t always save you. This, of course, is ridiculous, but in this scenario, a candidate who read the documentation yesterday and figured it out but has never actually worked with it might appear better than you, even though you have three years of experience but haven’t looked at the documentation in six months.

How should you prepare for interviews?

Build a personal knowledge base. I’ve written about this before. After my job search in November 2023, I had already developed a solid base for preparing for interviews for a Senior PHP Engineer position. When I had to prepare for a new interview in April 2024, it only took me two days. This isn’t cheating, it’s just a structured and intentional approach to managing your knowledge.

How can you get better at technical interviews?

At some point, I started approaching interviews not as an exam where I was bound to fail, but as an opportunity to learn something new and fill gaps in my knowledge. During the interview, I jot down questions on a piece of paper - questions I couldn’t answer, wasn’t sure about or simply found interesting.

After the interview, I thoroughly analyze these questions, study them, and update my knowledge base. Sometimes this takes a few days. This approach also helps reduce stress during interviews. It’s no longer an exam - it’s a free lesson. It’s also worth asking for feedback, though in my experience, it's not often provided, so whatever insights you can gather during the conversation are likely all you’ll get.

First 5 technical interviews like a loser and then like a pro?

Yeah, it happens. You shouldn’t expect to nail the very first interview like a super expert. There's stress, some lack of confidence and you’ll likely encounter topics you’ve missed, forgotten or aren’t sure about. And that’s absolutely normal.

If you practice the preparation approach I described earlier and regularly go to interviews, you’ll notice that the questions and topics discussed repeat themselves in about 70-80% of the interviews (especially in outsourcing and outstaffing companies). After 5-10 interviews, it’ll be hard to surprise you with anything new and if they do, you’ll have a new topic to dive into and add to your knowledge base. Isn’t that great?

How long does it take to find a new job?

I don't think there's a straightforward answer to this question. It heavily depends on your location, the tech stack you specialize in, your level of expertise, your salary expectations, the type of project you're looking for, the company and so on.

I'll share my own experience: the first time, it took me about two months to get an offer. The next time I started actively searching for a job, it took about two weeks to receive the first offer.

I'd also say that seasonality plays a significant role and it’s something to keep in mind. For example, August-September is traditionally a vacation season with heat and relaxation. Based on my observations, the number of job postings and overall recruiter activity has noticeably decreased during this time. However, October-December, as well as spring, are generally much more favorable periods for job hunting.

How to search for a job? Should you apply to open positions or will recruiters find you?

For a while, I actively applied to positions on various international and Ukrainian job platforms like Indeed, JustJoinIt, NoFluffJobs, Djinni, and, of course, LinkedIn (although, for some reason, I spent much less time searching and applying for jobs on LinkedIn). I applied to only 30-40 positions and didn’t reach a single technical interview. The main reason was likely the large number of candidates, making it hard to stand out. Yes, I know that’s not a lot, but at that point, I decided not to waste more time on it since I wasn’t seeing results, while on LinkedIn, I was receiving offers from recruiters.

This might sound strange given the current job market, but probably about 90% of the hiring processes I went through were initiated by recruiters, with around 70% coming through LinkedIn. I think this is directly related to my good experience in the IT industry and, unfortunately, the numbers might not be as favorable for junior specialists.

Receiving offers is cool, but it occurred to me that not all companies actively search for candidates. Nowadays, great companies often have a long line of applicants. They just may not have the time to search for candidates on their own. Just posting a job and filtering the candidates is enough.

Eventually, I came up with an alternative approach that worked quite well. I started sending connection requests to recruiters from companies I was interested in. LinkedIn allows you to add a small note with your request, where I mentioned that I was looking for a job and would be happy to collaborate.

It's best to target companies with open positions that match your profile, but I also encountered folks who said they didn’t have open vacancies at the moment but would pass my information along to their colleagues (for which I’m very grateful). In my case, the response was quite positive and effective, so I highly recommend this approach.

Is it important to create a good resume and fill out a LinkedIn profile?

Yes, in my opinion this is very important. This is the first thing that recruiters will see and based on it they will decide whether to continue communicating with you or not. And judging by what is written on the internet, they have very little time for this, so you need to try to pique their interest at first glance.

Just imagine, you add a recruiter as a friend on LinkedIn with the text that you are looking for a job (as I wrote in the previous question). The person has a busy workday, a lot of work, calls, candidates that need to be filtered and then some notification pops up. How much time do you have? Maybe 30 seconds? And even then, only if the title caught their interest and they opened your page to take a closer look.

Improving your resume and profile is an iterative process. Gradually, you will learn more about the hiring process and notice things that didn't occur to you before. You'll gain an understanding of what is currently relevant, what will grab the recruiter's attention, how to present your experience and achievements in the most interesting and advantageous way. All of this needs to be immediately incorporated into your profile and resume. You need to work on it constantly.

Are algorithms and data structures necessary for passing interviews? Is there live coding?

In all this time, algorithms and data structures have only been asked about a few times. And even then, it was often during a call with a recruiter in the "prepared questions from technical specialists" section.

I've had 2-3 live coding sessions, where there were simple algorithmic tasks (which could probably be solved without much knowledge of algorithms) and a few questions on OOP, GoF Patterns and SOLID Principles.

It's always better to know than not to know. There will surely be situations where this knowledge will come in handy, but I can't call it an absolute requirement.

Is there a salary limit that corresponds to your knowledge and beyond which you cannot jump?

It seems there should be some objective assessment of a specialist's value. A direct correlation between their knowledge and the money they receive. They even invented various "badges" like Junior, Middle, Senior, Lead, Architect, etc., which are supposed to reflect knowledge and directly affect a specialist's salary. But this is more within a single company. A company must have the ability to motivate you to develop your skills and encourage you to stay with them. And this is primarily about increasing your salary and giving you various “badges”.

But if we talk about job search, here we are dealing with many companies from different countries around the world. Here everything is completely different: the requirements for the candidate's knowledge are different, the financial situation and, accordingly, the budget for the position are completely different, the benefits and bonuses are different, the work schedule and workload are also different. For example, doing the same work in Ukraine you can get $3.5k - $4k, in Europe - $5k - $7k, and in the USA or UAE - $15k - $20k.

From my own experience, I can say that at the start of my job search I started with a smaller amount, and later, after about a month, I began to ask for a 40% higher salary. At the same time, the requirements for me as a specialist did not increase and the offers did not disappear.

I would say that there may be some local limit, as well as companies that take advantage of the IT market situation and want to underestimate salaries. But if you are a good specialist, you know English well, and you are bold and active enough to try something new, then the limit you thought of is most likely not a limit.

Should you be afraid to ask for more money?

I don't think so. Especially if you are at the final stage of the offer discussion. If you've made it to the finals, it's obvious that the company likes you and they need you. The company spends its time and money on the search, interviews, and everything else. So they will definitely be ready to discuss the details with you and not just reject.

You don't need to be afraid of rejection even at the first interviews with recruiters. As a rule, they will just tell you that their budget for this position is such and such, and if that suits you, let's move forward. And then it's up to you, but now you know the upper limit for this position.

In general, however, I wouldn't get too greedy. You still need to be able to realistically assess the job market in the location you're looking for, as well as your attractiveness in it and base your request on some average figures. It's clear that they won't just give you 2x or 3x the amount, but if you are convincing and can pique their interest, increasing the salary by 30-50% is quite possible.

What should you do while looking for a job?

Learn new things, expand your contacts, develop your personal brand.

For me, job hunting turns out to be more difficult than the actual job itself. And in fact, lately I've been spending more time preparing for the job search than actually doing it.

I try to use my free time to focus on my own development. This is an opportunity to master something new, take some courses, get certifications, write a pet project in a new framework or language. The main thing is to understand what you want to achieve, form a plan and stick to it strictly, otherwise you can drown in a sea of new technologies and never get to the active job search.

This applies to both technical skills and communication, leadership, mentoring, people management, time management skills, etc. And of course, you shouldn't forget about developing your personal brand and contacts on social networks (for me it's LinkedIn). I think the ability to present yourself, understanding what the market wants and good contacts are the most important skills for a job search.

Personally, I like it when my next job is something new for me. This is a great motivator and allows you to develop quickly. I set a specific goal, a plan on how to achieve it, and move forward. The main thing is not to count on the job coming to you by itself, you just need to put #opentowork and lie on the couch for a month or two. Of course, it may happen that way, but by putting in the effort you can achieve much more.

Conclusion

This turned out to be another long read. Time to wrap it up. In summary, I can say that finding a job is not easy, but it is definitely possible. Often it is more difficult than just going to work and it is definitely more stressful. You will have to show a lot of activity, ingenuity and self-confidence to attract attention to yourself.

But just think about it: you can improve your skills, you can meet new interesting people, you can get a job at a new company with new cool projects, you can increase your salary and afford more in the end. Isn't that great? :)