The Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
Optimizing the job search process:
If you have been laid off, take a deep breath; the world will keep moving on. Life will always find a way, with or without you. Once the initial shock wears off, you can ask yourself big-picture questions like the ones I outlined in my previous post. Once the postmortem and skills gap assessment are completed, you will be in either of three positions.
The common thread across all these options is that you have to find a new job. The best way to accomplish this goal is through the following five steps.
Step 1: Shortlist ten companies you want to work in. Go to the careers section of their websites, look at the job descriptions of roles you want to apply for, and primarily focus on the skills section. Do a skill gap analysis for each company you are looking to join. For the company you are targeting, your existing skill inventory should have a minimum 70–80% skill match. If a company needs an intermediate proficiency for a specific skill, you should also have an intermediate proficiency. But companies don’t always reveal in the job description which proficiency they are looking for (basic, intermediate, advanced, expert, etc). To understand this, you have to go to step 2.
Step 2: Connect with at least five people in the company you want to join. It is easier to make the first connection if they are from your university or workplace connections. Your contacts should have worked in the same jobs you are shooting for or been promoted from those jobs to higher positions. You will soon realize that LinkedIn networking is a numbers game, where only 10–20% of people bother to respond to messages. It is not that the non-respondents are evil. They are either too busy in their jobs or get too many spam messages. When you send the initial email, be brief and let them know you would like to learn more about their company and the jobs they are in. You could use my skill gap framework to add more credibility. Ask for something tangible, like other leads or a job referral, at the end of the conversation only if you think the conversation has gone well. Companies are as desperate as job seekers to get the right candidate. HR loves to meet people who have taken the initiative to talk to multiple people from within the company.
Step 3: Prepare well for interviews. It takes time to prep; hence, the smaller the target group, the more time you can devote to each company. Understand the culture of the company well. Talk to employees (as in Step 2) and research the pros and cons of the company. Glassdoor, Teamblind and other sites are good repositories to read about work culture, management strategy, etc. The insider accounts from employees can be revealing. Salary benchmarking is available on websites like levels.fyi. Ask intelligent questions during interviews. You can predict 90% of the questions you will be asked by looking at the skills section of the job description and preparing STAR answers in advance. Each STAR question asked by business leaders and HR links to a specific skill (as mentioned in the JD) that they want to measure. No company gets employees who meet all the technical and HR expectations. There is always a gap for every employee, so the trick is to play to your strengths and assure the company that you have the learning agility to learn skills you may not have. Companies are investing for the future, and nothing impresses them like a candidate who is humble, willing to learn and has a friendly demeanour.
Step 4: Rinse and repeat steps 1–3 for all the companies. Keep applying to companies you want to target. Horror stories abound of how people have gotten into their dream companies after 4–5 times of being rejected. Some people have got into FAMG companies in their 42nd and 103rd attempts. Don’t take failure personally; recruiting has failed to reinvent itself to a time when hundreds of people apply for a job in less than a minute online. There is much inefficiency in the recruiting process, and many good candidates get rejected regularly. In many companies, applying directly on the website without a referral wastes time, as recruiters don’t have the patience to sort through the hundreds of direct applications. Even referrals are no guarantee anymore; referrals are also being increasingly delegated to trash because there are too many. At the same time, the chances of a referral getting you to an interview are around 10%. This statistic compares favourably to a probability of 1-2% without referrals.
But keep trying; it is a matter of being at the right place at the right time. If you get only rejects for many months, get an evaluation done by an HR friend who has worked in recruiting to see what your big skill gaps are. Maybe some of your skill gaps can only be bridged by getting a Master’s degree, certification programs or working in lower-paying jobs to pick up the right work-related skills.
Step 5: As a last resort, ask for help on Linkedin. This is a last option because you may get a deluge of people reaching out, driven by pity, which can be counterproductive. Sifting through hundreds of leads in a short period is virtually impossible. Your target should be to make you get referrals to companies. Beware of people offering jobs straight away.
You want to avoid gravitating towards jobs where the managers are too happy to take you in, with minimal effort from your end in the application process. A lack of rigour in the application process means that companies are not evaluating your skills and not doing due diligence, which could result in you getting another low-end job you wanted to escape from in the first place. Remember, high-paying jobs with companies that treat you well are rare and competitive. The more hard work you put in towards a job, the chances are higher that you will find a job with a good fit with your skills.
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