Job-seeking advice based on promotion-seeking advice

Based off this series of tweets I made that felt would have made a better blog post.




So this is advice I came across for promotion seekers that is ALSO valuable for job seekers.


I'll explain...


The advice I hear when someone is looking for a promotion is to just start taking on the responsibilities of the role you want and document doing so. Now you can say "Hey, I've been doing this job already. It's a no-brainer giving me the position."

Office politics aside, it's really sound advice. The thing is, if you think about it, it can also apply to job searching. Employers are looking for people to get ramped up fast so when advertising yourself to an employer, try to show evidence that you've already been 'doing the job' they want to hire you for. This is especially important for less experienced candidates whose biggest hurdle is proving that their value-add will be bigger than the investment made in actually training them.

So now you need responsibilities to emulate. Job descriptions are a great place to start but I'd say you need to start networking with employers. If you have companies you are interested in working for, ping their devs (respectfully) and ask for a few moments of their time. Ask about their tech stack, what system does their team operate under, what problems they are trying to solve and what skills can a new person come in with that would be of great help to them. These questions can be asked of others in the organization as well. Different people in different departments will have different pain points they’re trying to resolve. The networking also helps solidify you in their memory because you’ve engaged with them.

Take that information that you’ve learned and now leverage it by learning those things, even at a beginner level, attempting to solve those problems and document your journey doing so. Now you've made yourself much more of a 'no-brainer'.

Obviously this is far from fool-proof but, especially for newer members of our industry, it gives you a lot of leverage to play with during your job search. You'll be producing projects and documenting your learning so even if it's not in a company's stack, you still have proof you can do the work or have ideas on how to get the work done:

Before I end, I would like to mention two caveats to this approach.

1. While this helps getting an interview, you may still have to leverage other job searching techniques to get a hiring manager to notice you to get an interview.
2. Interviewing itself unfortunately is a separate skill so you want to cultivate that in addition to trying this.

Anyhow, just some thoughts I had randomly that I thought would make good advice and wanted to share. I hope this was helpful and have a great one!