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How did you get your job? Any advice?
(lemmy.world)
submitted
11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
by
PlanetOfOrd@lemmy.world
to
c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I'm in tech; senior level. But I've been looking for work for over 3 years. I've been getting advice/tips/tricks from other people, but nothing has worked so far. These are things I've tried:
- Blindly applying for a job through the job form
- Working with a recruiter to get me a position.
- Asking to chat with someone on a team with an open position.
- Asking to chat with someone on a team with NO positions.
- Working to establish myself as an expert on social media.
- Asking friends if their company is hiring.
- "Slow networking" (not asking for a job directly, but trying VERY hard to be patient and get to know someone first)
- Fast networking...taking the direct "hey, you hiring?" approach.
- Lynchpin networking (connecting people w/ other people)
- Giving talks at conferences
- Guerrilla tech support (providing my 2 cents on a post even if no one was asking for it).
- open source contributions
- Temp agencies
- state jobs
- looking for "hiring" tags on social media.
- connecting with high-profile people and asking if they need help.
- developing a complete MVP that would help someone (yet I couldn't quite market effectively).
- Leveraging previous employers to see if they have anything new.
- Offering "low hanging fruit" gigs on social media.
- Putting my resume on job boards.
- Getting a role well below my pay grade and working my way up (if I try this I get automatically disqualified for being too overqualified).
- Providing free consultation to businesses.
- Hosting a podcast interview with someone from a company.
- Writing a guest post for an article (I've kind of done this, I think).
Edit:
- I've also had my resume, LinkedIn profile, and other social media, looked over by professionals and nonprofessionals alike. I've even gotten coaching. I've probably gotten more coaching than interviews at this point.
Another edit:
- The only think that's worked lately (as terrible as it sounds) is groveling and telling people the severity of my situation. And that's just gotten me very very small dead-end projects in someone's back pocket. I'm definitely trying to leverage these as best I can.
Any other strategies people have found that works? How did you get your job? I'm running out of ideas.
I've done a few things.
I have a mailing list for all my recruiters. They all get added in whenever I get pings on LinkedIn or cold calls. When I am looking for work the mailing list all gets BCC'd a message saying I'm looking, here is my resume, what I'm looking for, etc. When I book an interview I BCC them all saying one of the recruiters has setup an interview, if you work on their behalf do not submit my name as I know there are issues with multiple recuiters doing that. They all get the info, and honestly all the recruiters I've worked with have loved this.
Second is apply to everything. There have been places where their job description was my exact work history and yet I get no response. No one is hamed by you applying all over. They want candidates and if no one applied then the jobs would stay empty. I found a job in 4 months of looking but I applied to probably 70 jobs. Some were me trying to get a huge raise and position job, a few were worst case scenario. The job before my previous one took 9 months of looking and a few hundred applications. I did get a few offers along the way but not things I wanted to do.
It is all a numbers game. I've been a developer for 25 years and it has never been a one and done task. I have all sorts of crap to toot my own horn and I'd say that in 90% of the jobs I apply for I'm overly qualified and yet many times I didn't get a call because the person fielding my resume and application didn't move it along. Was the role filled? Did they think I'd get bored or expect more pay? Did they not like the font I'm using? I will never know.
Oh and your interview skills needs to be worked on.