My Story of 63 Job Applications and 83 Job Interviews in Slightly Over 2 Months

I was informed that my job would cease to exist in the end of January 2022. So, I did what people do, used my networks and different platforms to seek something new, something interesting and worthwhile to continue with. In the end I applied for 63 jobs and did 83 job interview rounds total in a little bit more than 2 months time before ending up in Alloy.

Here's what I learned:

The best way to get job interviews is to leverage your networks and post on LinkedIn and other social networks about your availability. It's a life hack of sorts. You still need to apply for open positions as well, especially for ones you get internal recommenders for, but those applications have a much higher rate of ending with an offer than just cold applications to open positions.

You need to tune your CV and your message to the kinds of positions you are looking for. In my case it is a bit difficult because I am a generalist with experience both in coding, in machine learning research and in leadership, and while companies certainly benefit from such people, they tend to have openings for such very rarely because such openings would be extremely difficult to fill. The other side of the challenge is to look too generic, too interchangeable, too bland, that it is difficult to exude exceptional worth. It is a balancing act.

Interviews come in all forms and sequences. In one extreme case I got a chat with a recommender, an interview by a recruiter, then an interview by a hiring manager, an interview by some other hiring manager, and six interviews by a panel, making ten interviews total for one position. The MAMA companies formerly known as FAANG are notorious for this, and their processes lag in mysterious ways. Smaller companies set up interviews based on good reasons instead of just following a byzantine process blindly. Smaller companies are often able to accommodate shorter schedules and to compress their processes if necessary. There is no real reason why larger companies would be incapable of doing that except, well, lack of care.

Job interviews and recruiting for software field is difficult. No one has got perfect processes and methods, and companies often just copy what the larger corporations are doing, no matter how dysfunctional. There are some things to note in general which many might know about but very few take into practice:

• You need to sell your company to the applicant as well. Very few companies do this in a purposeful fashion. Making the process as humane as possible is one part of this. Highlight what makes your culture, your team, your organization and your business special and how it brings joy. Introduce the applicant to the interviewers and the other way around.
• Since it is difficult to get even a small number of bits of information out from a short interview, the interviewers tend to gain this signal to the maximum, and "read" weak signals. This is mostly noise and for example a weak signal of the applicant making a small mistake in some specific thing doesn't mean incompetence in general.
• Related to the above, the best interviewers know that they need to take the position of assuming the best interpretation and assuming honesty. Simply put, the interviewer needs to respect the applicants instead of treating them like potential criminals in an interrogation. This is a way of mitigating bias where people have a tendency of assuming the worst interpretations in such settings. Imagine you are talking to a friend, not to an adversary.
• If you're hiring senior people, ask them to present something instead of putting them to an exam-like test. Senior people know things no one else knows, so it is impossible to test such knowledge with an exam.
• Instead of an algorithmic coding interview, it is generally better to show code and make an applicant review it. Very few companies do this, and in my whole career I have been given such a review task in a job interview only once. It is very easy to facilitate as well, and the code can come from public open source.
• It is more difficult to organize effectively, but sometimes it makes sense to do some more extensive organizational matching and tailoring if a good applicant is found. Instead of just a yes/no match for a single open position, it might make sense to escalate the process to check if the organization can be adapted to incorporate such people. In practice only small companies sometimes do this, although it would be plausible that larger corporations would have more opportunities for such.
• Hiring from a halo of community activity is much better than hiring based on applications alone. Your company should have open source projects, open meet-ups, different community outreaches and so on, each capable of bringing exceptional potential employees to the orbit of your company. It is not enough to have this community outreach in isolation, it should be purposefully integrated to fast-tracked recruitment processes.

With tens of interviews, sometimes five or six interviews a day, it will become extremely taxing and repeating the same things over and over becomes either soulless rote or escapes on a tangent to something totally different, for example about some topics you have recently discovered, which while less boring, might misrepresent the core substance of you. As an applicant, you should try to hone your delivery so that it evokes correct resonating stereotypes so that the interviewers get a sense of knowing you even after just a short chat.

It is very easy to get an impostor syndrome from numerous job interviews, and it can even be borderline abusive sometimes. Interviewers should recognize this, and candidates should try to keep faith while being steamrolled by endless less than perfect processes.

Job interviews are an excellent situation for networking in general, both for interviewers and interviewees. Always add everyone as connections on LinkedIn, and keep the personal connections alive even if the processes didn't end with a deal.

In the end, the world is far from complete, and we have numerous big challenges to solve. These challenges are solved by work, and so we should all try to make it easier for people to get to do that work.