job hunt tips that worked for me!🍵 some tea #45

plus my fav config talks.

the tech job market right now is all over the place. I guess we all know that.

so I felt like sharing a few things that I experimented with during my job-hunting era, and I feel they kinda worked?

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💬 interviewing for jobs not on my dream-list

To be very frank, when I was deep in my job hunting era, Preply wasn’t on my radar.

I didn’t know about Preply until my fab recruiter reached out to me. Ideally, I would have liked to go for some big tech like Spotify or Meta!

It took me a few calls with the team to get to know the product, understand it’s potential and feel excited.

This is just to say that maybe don’t hold on too tightly to your idea of ideal next company? Be open to early conversations and connections - and go one step further to see if you are missing out on a few opportunities by being very strict with your list.

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📝 writing a list of job requirements for myself

The above advice might sound like I am asking you to apply to 100s of jobs.

Hmm no. That wouldn’t be productive.

When you expand your radar, it’s equally important to tighten up your filters. It’s a balance - you consider companies you wouldn’t have considered, but with a clear idea of what an ideal role looks like to you.

Writing my own job requirements from a job helped me solve for this.

It can be a mix of industries/problem spaces that excite you, company size &, stage of funding you feel comfortable with, location, career paths you are considering, and ofc salary ranges.

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🪄 building a killer seller-deck.

This requires its own essay, but basically it was a deck with 6-7 slides I created to highlight my strengths and past projects and what I am looking for.

Kinda like a trailer of my work personality.

I used this when applying to jobs, to send to recruiters and for interviews other than the portfolio round.

This was my sneak around way to not have an online portfolio, but still have something very accessible and fun to send across everywhere I needed to.

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📆 sharing a 90-day plan with hiring managers

In the later stages of interviews, I created a quick 90-day onboarding plan and asked for an extra call with the hiring managers.

This was a game changer for me personally. It was something tangible that both of us could align on - and it gave both of us confidence on how we see this role panning out.

It is doing extra work but I would consider it extra work done strategically. When I joined, I just tweaked it and used it to onboard.

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⚙️ optimizing my top-of-funnel for job hunting

I think we would all love if our dream job can just land in our inboxes.

This DM-to-dream-job pipeline can only work if you have some sort of funnel on top i.e you need a way for people to find you and consider you for a job!

Don’t worry I am not gonna propose posting on LinkedIn thrice a week, but I am also not saying it will hurt. It’s my personal struggle too, but I do believe there are ways of creating this funnel by being authentic to yourself.

You could use LinkedIn/Twitter, or you could also go 1:1 route to message your network, or sign up for communities/job portals. You just need to think of ways people can find you.

Hope some of these help in your journey.

One more thing. I kept reminding myself it’s not me and it’s the job market that is broken atm. May I remind you the same. x

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📕 Reading
I absolutely loved reading Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, just like I loved her other book. The worlds she create truly feel like an escape.

This NY mag article on The Vexing Problem of the ‘Medium Friend’ kinda captured how it is living in a big city. Like they’re not your besties, but they’re more than just acquaintances.

I also love

Noah Smith

‘s weekly roundup of 5 interesting things and Mari’s yet another soul-crushing piece on how to come home.

📺 Watching

How many times did I watch Taylor’s surprise song mash up on Amsterdam night 3?

Yes. Everything has changed!

I couldn’t stop before watching this complete tiktok series of this woman learning to do tambour stitching (it’s an extremely tough haute couture technique) to make her Eras tour outfit. Lord give me the patience to do this someday.

Also been making my way through Config talks - here are my top 3 so far.

- Leaving fingerprints by the Browser Company
- Opting for the opposite by the creator of Wordle
- A look into teenage engineering

Okay that’s a lot of links for now. I should stop haha.

Talk next week,
Chhavi x

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