Just a month ago I was busy searching for a job after getting laid off from my previous company. In total during the span of three weeks I applied to 73 job postings.
From those I received 19 replies: 5 companies gave me pre-assessments (such as Hackerrank and take home assignments), 9 invited me for initial interviews, and 5 invited me for interviews/assignments that I had to reject because I didn't have the time to (or the emails just came too late).
After that, a company gave me an offer right away while the other 3 invited me for additional interviews. In total I received 4 job offers and accepted one. You can explore the details on the chart below.
Scroll right to see the whole data.
The reason why I applied to so many positions was because I was scared of how hard it'd be to find a job during the pandemic. In hindsight, I would probably be better off taking a more targeted and strategic approach in my job applications instead of focusing too much on quantity.
Anyway now that I'm done with it, I want to write some of the things I learned from the whole process and from reading several blogs and forums (I found r/cscareerquestions to be particularly helpful for a software engineer like me). So, let’s start.
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Don’t get intimidated by job requirements
Many people with 1 year or less work experience might get intimidated by job postings that say they require 3 years of experience, or if you’re a software engineer then seeing a long list of tech stacks might deter you from applying to a job posting, and if you’re a coding bootcamp graduate with a non-CS degree like me then you might get discouraged when you see a position requiring a CS degree.
But note that sometimes (or even a lot of times) the qualifications listed on the job postings are just the recruiters' wishlist. Since job postings nowadays receive so many applicants, recruiters might choose to pad the qualifications to increase the barrier of entry and filter the number of applicants.
So, don’t be afraid to apply to a job posting if it seems interesting enough to you. The worst that could happen to you is getting ghosted or rejected by those companies, which is just a risk that comes with job-hunting.
In my experience, despite only having one year of experience (and only in teaching instead of practical software development), I still get called to interview with companies that stated the jobs require 2–4 years of experience.
Don't apply to positions you want the most right away
Nobody knows when are you gonna get invited for job interviews, but most of the time the first companies that you've applied to are gonna be the ones that invite you first.
So, if it's possible, you should start by applying for positions that aren't that high on your I-really-want-to-work-here list. Why? Because you need to give yourself a room for mistakes in your early interviews, and I bet that it hurts less to do badly in an interview for a company that you're lukewarm about compared to those that you're absolutely enthusiastic about.
It doesn't mean that you should apply for positions that you don't want at all because it's not nice to attend interviews just to waste your interviewers’ time. Please still apply for those positions by keeping in mind that those companies are worth considering for, who knows if from the interview you might find the workplace to be more appealing than you previously thought.
Regardless, if you did badly in your early interviews, you can still learn from them, and now that you've built some experiences and are more confident in your interviewing skills there's a bigger chance for you to do well interviewing for companies that are high on your I-really-want-to-work-here list.
Remember that interviews work both ways
It’s not all about companies interviewing you but it’s also about you interviewing the company. If you’ve received an interview invitation, be sure that besides preparing the answers for their questions you also prepare some questions that’ll help your decision-making process. For me, I usually always ask questions related to work-life balance, company culture, tools and teammates that I’m gonna work with.
I once decided not to continue to the next step with a company because I found that the company culture just wouldn’t fit me. Both role and cultural fit are important to me, so it definitely saves both my and my interviewers’ time if I get to know them beforehand on my initial interview.
Be honest about what you know and don’t know
I remember during one job interview I answered some technical questions by making things up whenever I wasn’t that sure about the answer. Huge mistake. Suffice to say, they didn’t contact me again after that.
Admitting that you don’t know something is totally acceptable and human, besides, employers won’t expect you to know everything, and if they do expect it then it’s not the kind of company that you want to work for. Just imagine the pressure of working in a place where you’re expected to know everything.
Another thing is to set your interviewers’ expectations. The job posting might say that they require certain skills that you don’t have. Just be honest and say that you don’t know those things but are willing to learn in case that the job requires them.
During the technical interview for my current job, my mind blanked out a lot. There were many questions that I didn’t know the answers to and I just admitted that I knew nothing about them. I thought I bombed the interview, but hey, I actually got offered the job. So, maybe, the things that I do know make up for the things that I don’t know.
Say your expected salary but do some research first
There are differing opinions regarding this matter, there are those who say that you should never say your expected salary because it’s gonna be a lose-lose situation: either you put a number too high and out of your employer’s budget or a number too low that will cause you to get paid far less than you're supposed to.
These are some valid concerns but personally, I subscribe more to those who say that you should reveal your expected salary. Why? Because of the anchoring effect. Quoting from Harvard’s Program On Negotiation blog:
“The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered.”
So, by setting a number as an anchor you’re setting it as a base point for the recruiter to consider the amount of salary that they’d offer—which you can expect to be 10–20% less than your ask price. So, be sure to set your expected salary (or the lowest number if you’re giving a range) to be 10–30% more than the actual number that you’re willing to accept.
But what if you set a number too high or too low? Then that’s where research comes into play, Glassdoor and Qerja are quite helpful in providing the salary data of many companies. Although I find the data for the Indonesian companies are quite limited.
Another option is if you have previous work experience, then you can set your last salary as your baseline. So you can put your expected salary to be at the very least 10–20% above that.
Be transparent about your current job-hunting progress to your recruiters
Firstly, it makes your recruiters’ jobs easier if they have the information about the stage of job-hunting that you're at, whether you’ve received some offers or not, and what amount of compensation and benefits was offered, etc.
And if you’ve already received some job offers, revealing that to the recruiters might send a signal that your talent is in demand. The recruiters might be willing to expedite the interview processes and make the recruiting timeline works better for you, and if they give an offer they might also give a more competitive salary package using your other offer(s) as the benchmark.
Just be careful not to lie about receiving job offers or use it to make the recruiters compete with each other, because it might come back to bite you if they decide that they’d rather focus on other candidates who are easier to work with or are more likely to accept the job, so then you are left with no fallback plan once you lose the offer.
Negotiate but don’t (or do) get greedy
Let’s say now you’ve received an offer but it’s somewhat below your expected salary. Remember that negotiating is always an option and recruiters might usually give some wiggle room (except if their budget is very tight). The worst thing that could happen is them saying no to your counteroffer, but many might increase their initial offer and willing to meet you in the middle.
So, what to say when they give you an offer below your expected salary? Firstly, always thank them for offering you the position, but then also say if you’re not happy with the amount since it’s still below your expected salary, and then ask them if they’re willing to negotiate. What if they say that the number is final? Then decide whether you should walk out from the negotiation or whether you’re willing to go with their offer.
Now, what if they give you an offer within your expected salary range? Well, you can still ask whether they’re still open to negotiation. At best, they might be able to increase their offer by 5–10%, but I personally don’t think it’s worth the hassle if I’m already happy with their initial number. At this point, it might just be greed talking, but hey, it’s never a bad thing to try to negotiate and maybe get a few percentage increases to your salary.
Job referrals are the King
Two of the job offers I got recently were from the companies that I got referred to by friends. I also got an interview for my first job out of college from my friend’s referral. So, it seems that the chance of scoring a job interview and offer is much higher if you’re referred to the company from their employees or former employees.
Besides my anecdotal experience, Glassdoor Economic Research from 2015 also backs this up, stating the employee referral as the interview source that is the most likely to lead to a job offer — 2.6 to 6.6% increase in probablity compared to regular online applications which actually decrease the probability of job offer by -11.4 to -15%.
Why is this so? My guess is that employers are more likely to trust the candidates that are referred to by their employees or former employees, because by referring them then they are vouching for candidates with their reputations, so it’s less likely that they’re just gonna refer some random people.
Conclusion
To sum it up, these are the points that I learned from my job-hunting experience:
- Oftentimes, job requirements are just the company’s wishlist. Don’t be discouraged to apply as long as the position seems interesting to you.
- Start from the companies that you're lukewarm about and apply to those that you absolutely want after you're more confident in your interviewing skills.
- Interviewing the company is just as important as the company interviewing you. Use it as a chance to get to know about the company and its work culture better.
- You might need to sell yourself during a job interview, but please don't oversell yourself and be honest about what you know and don’t know.
- Set a number for your expected salary to take advantage of the anchoring effect, just make sure that you’ve done your research and are realistic with your number.
- Make your recruiters’ jobs easier by keeping them updated with your current job-hunting progress. It will work in your favour too.
- Once you’ve received an offer try to negotiate and get it as close to your expected salary as possible, but firstly decide what’s “enough salary” for you.
- Utilise your network and get referred to jobs because it yields the biggest chance for a job offer.
Do note that many of these tips come from my own and other people’s anecdotal experiences. So take it with a grain of salt and please utilise the best strategy for your situation since your mileage might vary. Regardless, I hope it might help those of you who are currently hunting for jobs. Best of luck!