How to Avoid Burnout In Your Software Job Search

there is a shortage of software Engineers I saw this headline everywhere when I was searching for my first software engineering job and I really twisted my expectations on how difficult the process would be I know the job search is an emotionally draining process and I have been there I've battled self-doubt anxiety expectations and over 600 job projections my name is Casey I've been a software engineer for about six years and my goal is to help people feel less alone in their career and their life and today I wanted to talk about this phrase about the shortage of software Engineers I wanted to talk about the difficulties of getting a job and some actionable tips to help your mindset and help you stay motivated during the process so let's start by first debunking the myth of the software engineering job shortage the first thing that I found pretty surprising to hear is that it really wasn't a myth there truly is a shortage of software Engineers but when companies are talking about this they are talking about a shortage of experienced software Engineers the technology is still projected to grow over the next 10 years you can see here on the stack Overflow 2023 developer survey that the overwhelming majority of professional developers are between the ages of 25 and 34. okay but why was it so hard for me and everyone else to get their first job if that is the case two reasons supply and demand you can also see on the same survey that the overwhelming majority of people learning how to code are between the ages of 18 and 24 meaning that there's just a massive supply of people looking for their first software job taking a look at the hired.com 2023 survey you can see that the demand for people with zero to four years of experience is overwhelmingly low with it actually dropping to eight percent of the total demand in January of 2023 and those two reasons a lot of people fighting for not a lot of jobs is the Crux of why it is so hard to get your first software job and you couple this with the fact that we have social media posts on Reddit LinkedIn blind about people who take take three months out of boot camp and are able to get like 300K total conversations or something ridiculous like that it's really no wonder that people are so discouraged lately and so let's discuss challenges people are having searching for their first job and what they can do about it number one difficulties in even getting an interview in the first place obviously this is the biggest struggle this is what I struggled with the hardest I would send out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of applications I would get nothing I would get ghosted I would get some sort of long side project that would take a weekend to complete everything about it was annoying and unsatisfying and just ridiculous but from what I found for my research and for my friends and all the people that I talked to sending out tons and tons of applications 800 to a thousand is pretty much in the normal range it truly is a numbers game for applying to these companies especially when these companies are getting thousands upon thousands of applications per job opening number two difficulties passing software engineering interviews and so this is what what everyone is talking about every YouTube channel every Tech blog every course that people are trying to sell it is about how to pass the software engineering interviews and there is no doubt it is hard and it has become harder than ever especially for junior developers and passing interviews honestly are just a matter of time effort and experience and that won't happen overnight we're not trying to get that first job I was pretty overwhelmed because I was trying to study for software engineering interviews I was trying to work on my side projects I was trying to apply to as many jobs as possible it's okay to start slow and to feel overwhelmed and to feel like everything is ridiculously difficult and unachievable I think what helped for me during that time was to focus on one thing at a time and slowly build up from there so I think I would start with one lead code question and then the next day I would do maybe one and a half or two and then I would apply to more jobs at the same time it is definitely a game for the long term number three difficulties with behavioral interviews so this was something that I was always underprepared for these are basically interview views where no one's asking you to code or write anything technical on a whiteboard or anything but instead they ask you so tell me about a time you had a conflict with a co-worker and when I first started interviewing I had basically assumed that behavioral interviews were just to make sure you're not a crazy person and while that still is kind of true for some companies it actually matters a lot more than you might think my experience interviewing at Amazon actually helped me with this process for all my interviews to come basically if you don't know Amazon has these behavioral screens that count for like 50 of your actual score basically they'll ask a whole bunch of very specific behavioral questions they'll drill down on it they'll ask follow-up questions so while I was prepping for the interview I basically took every single one of their leadership principles and I wrote two stories for each one I think in total I wrote like 24 25 stories I still use these same stories in pretty much every interview I have now whenever I'm asked something that's not technical related and that will probably help you too at least it'll give you a slight Edge in these kinds of interviews number four difficulties in getting discouraged by other people's success and when I was searching for my first job even though I loved all my friends and my classmates and all these acquaintances who are getting new jobs I couldn't help but see their posts about their success and be like what am I doing wrong it's easy to feel that way but I would recommend to not let it discourage you people succeed at all different paces and I think when you're searching for your first job you should really refrain from looking at these success story type posts because they're only kind of set you back in your journey number five the feeling of rejection and the depressive spiral so the depressive spiral is a term I made up for myself but it would go like this I would spend days weeks making good progress I'll be studying leak code I would be applying to jobs I would be getting calls back from companies and then suddenly something would set me back I would get ghosted by a company I would bomb a phone screen get flaked on by an interviewer but the idea was that when these things would happen they would break my mindset and make it difficult to continue doing the things I was doing well this feeling this spiral really sucks but as long as you're laser focused on the end goals you'll always have these ups and downs in your journey along the way you still just again need to keep at it every single day and with that I wanted to give some tips for keeping a positive mindset while searching for a job and for maintaining your mental health during that search so tip number one is to focus on habits every single day if you don't have habits it can really make you feel like you're going in circles and not going anywhere in your searching process in a lot of ways it's like going to the gym if you go one day and you're 0.01 times stronger you're not going to feel it the next day but if you go to the gym for six months you'll probably be way stronger than when you came the way I learned to focus incrementally was during actually my job search in 2019 where whenever I would do Lee code questions I would make sure I recorded every single question I did how difficult I thought it was when I completed it and repeat them on a regular basis and it's really helped to give me a visual representation of the progress I was making and the second tip is to incorporate daily rituals into your studying process so the worst days while studying for my first job are the days when I would get up at like 11 A.M randomly and then lock myself in my room with coffee and then study lee code until I felt like I was going to puke so the idea here is to make sure you have a routine I didn't feel good about my routine until I made sure to get up at a consistent time go to the gym go to a coffee shop and really just treat this whole process like it was kind of like a nine-to-five job tip number three is to do physical activity every day so I remember it was about the end of college when I actually started incorporating strength training and going to the gym and stuff it wasn't necessarily to make job searching easier specifically but it was more about Stress Management like whenever I would feel stressed whenever I would feel hopeless going to the gym in the morning gave me a little bit of time to escape de-stress and I almost always felt better when I came back tip four is to use Pomodoro techniques so this was a pretty simple strategy I used but before when I would study I would sit down look at the 10 lead code questions I needed to do and then just start procrastinating because I didn't want to get started on such a massive task but it said what was easier was to tell myself I was going to do 25 minutes work followed by a five minute break and then repeat that process over over and over and over again first of all it would just lower the barrier of entry for starting my tasks and second of all these blocks of time for studying they actually became much more manageable and it was almost like a challenge in a sense to see how many cycles I could complete in a day rather than just how many Elite code questions I could do tip five is to take daily walks so I remember when I was a kid my parents or my teachers or all these people would talk about taking daily walks and I just thought it was something that old people did okay maybe there's still a shred of truth to it or maybe it says something about me now but I found that just taking daily walks and getting some sun on your back actually really improves your mental health I can't even explain why I would just always feel better and it really helped me to regulate my mood and my mental health during these up and down swings of studying tip six is to make sure you're taking breaks at the end of the day so just because you're studying for a job and you don't have one currently doesn't mean you're under house arrest I think some days I would take the idea that because I didn't have a job I had to punish myself and study like 16 hours a day until I could get something done I think while we all focus on the technical things during the first job search like coding portfolio projects Etc your mindset and your mental health are so important while looking for their first job and if your mind isn't working if your mind isn't healthy it makes literally every part of your job search more unbearable and less effective you're gonna perform worse at interviews you're going to be depressed all the time you're not going to be able to absorb as much information in your brain and even like the emails you send out to recruiters are going to start sounding desperate which is not what companies want if you're stuck in the job search journey and you want to hear like a relatable journey I would recommend you check out my own Journey about my first job search thanks for watching

Channel: Created By KC

Views: 102,447

Keywords:

Id: oWa1kG80NCI

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023