Applying to 500 Developer Jobs with No Luck: A Candid Discussion

all right what can I help you with um I am having trouble Landing my first job in the industry okay so what do you have in trouble what's exactly um you know I've applied to almost 500 if not over 500 jobs and I'm really struggling with Just Landing interviews I think out of 500 jobs I've only had job applications submitted I've only been in maybe six or seven interviews yeah okay yeah how did those interviews go um a few of them I actually made it to the final round and um you know they ended up going with a more experienced developer and then the other ones I flopped somewhere in the uh decoding challenges and one they ended up they were gonna give me an offer and then they ended up changing the job description at the very end so yeah that's frustrating it was man all right um I'm just gonna ask um I guess a series of questions to try to figure out what might be holding you back um since we only have you know 25 minutes um it's going to be condensed do you do you prefer like a few job boards where are you finding your jobs to apply to there is uh one platform in particular that I've used a lot called otta otta and then just LinkedIn I've tried Angie's List indeed but I just get a lot of like weird spammy material from those those um those platforms but most of my interviews have came from LinkedIn or Ada LinkedIn or Auto when you apply on LinkedIn first of all are you applying directly on LinkedIn and otta uh so yes but I'm preferring to go directly to the company's website good um yeah okay so if they if you can do that you always do that okay oh so I'm actually asking sorry oh yes okay okay oh yeah that was like definitely uh that is what I prefer to do I pretty much always go to the company website and then I'll go on the LinkedIn and I'll I'll like look for recruiters or some kind of management and I'll either connect with them uh with a note or I'll send them a message if that's possible being like hey you know my name is Mitch I'm a talented front-end developer I recently applied to this position at your company um if you come across my resume please reach out I'm just respectfully you know respectfully Mitch essentially um and sometimes that's worked but sometimes not okay um I'm gonna be candid that sounds like a a templated message that is like no value whatsoever okay so first of all you're doing something that most developers won't do you're reaching out you're taking that initiative that's awesome um but that that message is so generic it's like a recruiter wants to bring someone on that like is really interested in the company and sometimes it's hard to like have a lot of interested in a company you just don't want to work for you just trying to get a job like I get it um but finding something that you can relate to super helpful um and so I usually recommend like if you're applying to a position um I still people fight me tooth and nail to this day but like submit a cover letter that cover letter should be no more than two paragraphs if it's more than half a page it's an entry level developer you're doing it wrong the first paragraph shows that like you've at least looked at what the company is right and you're like okay I get what you guys are doing I get your goals um and like I really value this value that you said on your website or like um your Tech Team actually mentioned something I'm really passionate about accessibility like I've read the entire article like this was awesome like you should actually look at one of my LinkedIn posts I talked about it right that's um that's a very relatable cover letter and that makes it worth writing that cover letter it's a very relatable follow-up message to a recruiter that's a message worth reading for that recruiter and so when you've applied for that many positions you it's it's easy to just get into this rut of just like okay 15 more applications this week 15 more right it's discouraging it's it's self-defeating and I find that you're gonna have to find a way actually I'm just going to ask you do you feel burned out from applying to positions you know I actually um I kind of haven't luckily I don't but the the answer is no I don't feel burned out I do feel discouraged um obviously but luckily I have this indomitable Spirit where I'm just like I'm gonna get this thing done however the results have been you know not where I want them to be I'm really just interested in making progress and I'm stuck there so anything you know to encourage me to keep fighting would be helpful yeah well I mean good for you first of all because I know after uh that many positions I'd be discouraged um and I think what I suggested will help you a lot I think going for a more tactful approach can help I also think that you are going about it with a cold application process there are other strategies as well usually more effective strategies if you've already taken that initiative to reach out to recruiters maybe you'd be open to them but I'm going to mention a few things like you can participate hackathons especially in your local community they can be online as well but like make sure the hackathons have recruiters coming in looking at the projects you can get a project up quickly um and it's a it's a valuable project you're working on a team try not to step on each other's toes hackathons are really powerful in that sense you can also go to networking meetups and go to developer meetups usually any sort of Meetup that doesn't charge you I mean it depends like you just got to be wary of networking meetups that charge you but like if a Meetup has a networking type event but it has like a topic or it has a lecture and then like you get together and do something like create something or you know what I mean like going to meetups like that that's powerful do you feel like you've really um taken that initiative with networking Focus you know I have not I would say that is something I am not doing to the full potential okay um that's so yeah I mean the real is this is is tough and I just told the last person this um we're we're heading deeper into a recession the market sucks it like and the thing is a lot of what you're doing it might be right and it's just it's really hard to stand out going forward networking is going to be key 100 Network you have to push forward with it [Applause] um so I think taking that initiative will help and one thing I want you to remember when you create a connection with other aspiring developer because a lot of people are like I would need to network with hiring managers no you don't meet other aspiring developers similar interests right they get hired what does that company do before they put up a public job posting they ask the team hey we got to bring in 10 more developers right you just recommend anything or anyone um who would you recommend and a lot of times they kind of just want to bring in someone that's going to Vibe with the team good culture you Vibe with that person chances are you know you might Vibe with the team and so a lot of it is just like doing what you can to reduce that risk that the company sees you as because every employee is a risk and one way you could do that is ensuring or giving more confidence that you could potentially be a good cultural fit so um have some other ideas but I I know I just said a lot so what are your thoughts on that I actually think that's a really good perspective you know I did write down like goals for 2023 and you know Landing that job is just like the bigger picture but inside of that networking and hackathons are are on that list of things that I want to do so this is just uh some sort of inspirational confirmation for me I would have loved I'm this is what I'm gonna do you know you've inspired me okay sure yeah um let's challenge um let's challenge your projects and how you're showcasing yourself so a lot of times I don't think I would say like 1 out of 50 developers where I look at their resume their resume is actually like high quality and very impressive to a hiring manager at an entry level I think a lot of people screw the resume portion up so I don't think I have enough time to like manage the screen sharing and set that up but can you go ahead and describe like what's on your resume yeah absolutely actually I have that right here um so on my resume I kind of went with the skills first type um presentation and then right under my skills I have certifications a little bit of work experience I've actually done some freelance some freelance work and then I have my notable projects and just a little bit of Education gotcha so your freelance work your experience is going to go above your education stuff your education at the bottom it's less relevant unless you got something I like if you're aiming for like heavy back-end positions you got something like an AWS certification or no but I do I just have a boot camp uh cert and a back-end meta from Coursera um and then just like a bunch of random front-end certifications from like codecademy and udemy and stuff like that it's probably taking up a lot of space on your resume huh it actually isn't I I um I just put multiple front-end certifications and then under under that it just says code academy you know like the Oxford comma udemy Etc and then just the dates that I was teaching myself to program it's actually very clean very neat all on one page um and I think it's the best version of the resume that I have yet okay I would say yeah what percentage height wise does your projects your personal projects take up percentage height weight oh so the notable projects only take up like eight eight lines total um I don't know how to describe that percentage-wise I would say maybe I could just say like one third maybe slightly less one third slightly less okay maybe like a full a few first of all apologize for this I I would probably ask for the resume with like your details scrambled out so that's why I'm not having you share it um but so how like okay how much time each day are you spending on just trying to become a developer oh that's a really good question um So currently I'm unemployed so I've been able to really focus on my skills and I have a schedule where I apply to jobs every other day and then um my typical schedule is going to be like 6 a.m I do some coding challenges and then I move on to uh projects that I'm working on including uh maybe projects that I'm contributing to um and then uh you know the next day I'll include some sort of application process in there which takes about an hour to two hours and I can typically bang out with like we mentioned I'm kind of just templating out these resumes I could probably do like you know 10 or 15 job applications in those those two hours ah I don't know how you do that I couldn't do that that almost feels like you're still templating out I am yeah as we've mentioned yeah that's I think we're gonna move away from that so I would aim for no more than 15 a week okay I think you are applying for way too many positions and we talked about this but what that tells me it's like yeah you're kind of just spitting out your resume to as many companies as possible um in like an eight-hour day let's say an eight-hour day how many hours are you dedicated towards actual Project work not coding challenges Project work Project work um uh it's got to be like four hours maybe maybe slightly more sometimes it's a good amount I appreciate that um so you're keeping up with the project work uh what project are you working on right now I'm currently just fooling around with um uh fetching apis and react and making like little projects that I can put on my portfolio um so like right now I'm accessing like a drink API a cocktail API basically using typescript react and just trying to make something interactable on like say code sandbox and then present that into my portfolio just to make just to show people that I know these Technologies and what have you gotcha are you applying are you mainly focused on front end positions uh yeah I've decided to specialize um when I'm applying to jobs I got caught up in this mindset where I thought maybe more was better and in reality I was struggling with um some of these technical interviews because I was just doing too many other things and so I'm like you know what I'm a really good front-end engineer that's kind of what I'm naturally geared towards I'm just going to be that so yeah that's good that's good that you recognize that it's very perceptive um I feel like like the racist so you're doing coding challenges you're getting a little bit more comfortable with data structures and algorithms you're doing a little bit of applications each day and we talked about those applications are going to be a little bit more tactful going forward um you're doing a lot of project work you're keeping up with that that's and you know like having that it's very shallow but having that GitHub tree green as green as possible and showing consistency right because like you know a developer that has that maybe codes like once a week or something like that it's frankly they're just going to look less attractive like and there's going to be more questions in the employer's mind whether they're like ready to go they're going to be in this for the Long Haul um so it's a very shallow thing to look at but they can look at other things like okay you build some projects let's look at your GitHub when were these commits done um like let's look at a long history of this person and do they really want to code because we don't want to hire someone that's just a career transition or looking for more money and like uh we can hire someone that actually cares and has a passion for coding that also wants that right um so a lot of it a lot of employers are just it's just a giant risk assessment they don't want to hire the wrong person um I think the project work is good it sounds like the most recent project that you're working on it's good to practice that it's good to Showcase your skills as a front-end developer you want to interact with different apis and if you can um if you do something with that data to create a meaningful app with that data that's different that's powerful but it's also um that it's also kind of a it's a low value project in the sense like you're just building projects to Showcase your skills and Mitchell I have no idea what you care about in front end do you feel like your projects actually showcase like the types of problems you want to solve no I think not at all I think I've been using this to show my skills and not necessarily my passion and I'm a very passionate person about this about what specifically um I think that I just fell in love with with programming and Building Things I'm a builder by Nature I was a I was a construction manager for a long time and um a buddy of mine who I was just I didn't want to be in that career anymore I was like you know this is just not what I want to do for the rest of my life and this was like four or five years ago and a buddy of mine who was working uh at Oculus at the time was like Hey man try coding and lo and behold I was like you know ever since that first hello world man I was just hooked um and I'm interested in building things that people can interact with uh so that's really I just love it I like learning these skills I would wake up at 4 30 in the morning program until like you know seven head to work and I was a manager so I was there for like 10 hours I had meal prep on Sundays to come home and just program rinse you know and repeat for four years you know finally I'm unemployed and this is the iron's hot you know got a strike and I love this this is what I'm passionate about yeah yeah so you know some people like people like me I want to build specific tools there are other people that really really love talking about the architecture of their react app and why it's Superior why they think this is scalable there are some people that want to build a gamified experience on the front end that's very interactive and it makes the user feel good good or it solves the problem in a way that like it reminds them of like playing video games as a child and you get that reward system and you get that dopamine hit it's like sounds nice yeah it does right and so as you specialize in front end I think that's a great strategy if you want to have a back end you can use some external service like super bass or firestore it's like just you know uh firestore is a non-relational database superbase is a relational database model I believe but like you can add more complexity to your apps right if you want to build like a full crud project if that's the type of problem you're solving which it doesn't have to be but with front end it's like you know I I don't know much about you Mitchell do you have like a like if I'm a hiring manager do you have a or a recruiter even like do you just have a bunch of templated projects that showcase technical skills that 100 other applicants have or do you showcase how passionate of a builder you are in talking about like maybe you posted a LinkedIn article and you're just like this project was like really fun and I started I struggled for like three days on this uh really frustrating JavaScript library um but it built it was a drag and drop Library I'm talking about myself by the way it was a drag and drop library that I brought into my project I could build this like educational uh learning platform for children and I finally like in you're probably gonna word it in a different way but like do you provide that transparency of that passion of that interest or are you just throwing your resume to with a bunch of templates to employers you know I think before the boot camp I was um building passion projects and I was like really more engaged in like what my end goal was with this project and then after the boot camp I think I've just been so focused on getting a job that I'm forgetting to be that I'm forgetting to have something more meaningful behind what I'm doing to Showcase that passion if that makes sense I think you've got me red-handed yeah that makes a lot of sense and what you just said I'm telling you that that's powerful that's going to make you stand out and I can promise you you're not alone especially going deeper into 2023 a lot of people are just they're just trying to get a job at this point and sometimes that passion can die a little bit and I then then the mistakes happen then people start weaning back on how much Project work they do they start panicking because they have a financial situation they have bills coming up and it's like then life just you know life is life and you now you have to deal with life yeah and so you have to find a way for that interest for who you are as a person and what you can contribute and what you can bring onto a team and who you are as a person do you even do I want to work with you as a developer like show me that right the more you can do that whether it's writing a LinkedIn article whether it's creating a project that's just like blows uh that's just like super relatable to employer maybe you focus you you talked about like I was very very I was very strict with my day I'd wake up I would do this I'd go work out I'd eat and then I'd code and like you have very strict schedule and you're like habits are really important I've learned a lot of things about habits right and then you go and you build maybe like a habit track or something like that um and you use that project that's very relatable to companies that care about mental health that care about progress like Fitness companies Focus companies right so now you can create projects that showcase something that you're interested in it solves your problems or it solves other people's problems and it's very relatable in the sense that you've probably built some features that this company is now using right and so this is where it's like you can't just build a bunch of applications that's relatable to everyone you don't no one has the time of the day to do that so you have to focus on a project you're like this is fun to build and you have to think about like what companies are actually going to care about this what industries are going to care about what I'm building and sometimes again it's not about the product idea of the project idea sometimes it's you exposing your transparency your process as a developer your interest in being a builder right and maybe that translates into you like you really care about structuring an app and making it scalable or something like that so um yeah I think the more you at least try to refocus on that just a little bit I think you're gonna stand out but again you can't just do that and continue the route you're going you have to provide transparency a window into people seeing that and so networking like we talked about that can happen you can talk about projects you can talk about what you're interested in you could do it at these networking events you can do it through hackathons that's also another window yeah man let's go okay so I know where it is always limited with time but um do you feel like that gave you some tangible advice going forward most definitely I also think it helped me refocus um like the the the aim in um like making the connection behind the the work that I'm doing right because they're not just hiring someone who can do something they're hiring like an entire person behind that skill and I need to be relatable for these people and I need to know what I'm passionate about which in some regards is more valuable than the skills itself sometimes you know well I fit in this culture do I have something meaningful to offer this company and this team right it is you have to have a certain technical proficiency depending on like what they're looking at but a lot of people do and so when you do what stands out it's you Mitchell who you are as a person the type of developer that I'm going to be working with day to day like yeah you're on the right page with that so uh all right cool well you know feel free to you know you're welcome to stop into any live stream let us know how you're doing that's what some people do but uh Mitchell it was nice to meet you thanks so much for coming on and it was a pleasure and I really appreciate you uh I'm inspired man [Music] you'll see everything [Music]

Channel: DonTheDeveloper

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Id: VCYfgnkLtTs

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023