Getting Recruited
##Getting Recruited
The money is in tech, and so is the freedom. I have friends working in other fields, being pushed around by power-tripping assholes for a pittance of wages. In tech, the power-tripping assholes have to pay you a lot of money, and you only get pushed around in Zoom calls you take from sunny beaches while you work remotely. This spoils you, and I want all my friends to be as spoilt as I’ve become, so I’ve taken to telling everybody I meet to join the tech industry, agriculture and the arts be damned. Let the peasants grow potatoes, I’m going to make apps.
Now I’m not a guru at being hired, but I’ve been rejected so many times that I’ve figured out a few ways to avoid it. But, since I haven’t needed to beg for a job in a while now, everything I learnt is fading away. So this write-up is as much for my bum friends as it is for my bum self. Note, I have barely made it to the mid-level in my career. I’m not exactly sure where I should be placed. So my advice works for fresh graduates and juniors. I don’t know the tricks people with more experience than us use.
Getting in there
The hardest fucking part is getting in there, trust me. Do anything you can to get in, because once you’re there everything becomes much smoother. If you’re coming from a developing country, you need to get ready to shotgun every job-site you can think of. Almost nobody will reply. Somebody might, and you could possibly end up getting an offer, but it could take months or even years.
That’s why it’s better to have a reputation. Technical posts, articles, tutorials, and public talks help, but they take a lot of effort and you run the risk of becoming a LinkedIn Influencer, which would make you an asshole. Having referrals is way easier. Don’t be shy to ask for one, because a) the person who refers you gets money if you get hired, and b) if they say no, who cares what that fuck thinks anyway. You really need that referral. If they say no, ask somebody else. This is like picking girls up at the club, but with actual stakes. If your CV and skills aren’t awful, people should help. If everybody says no, you either have terrible luck, or you just suck. Go back to the drawing board and figure out what’s going on.
Talking to a Person
If you got an interview, congratulations, you made it to the starting line. You need to make sure you interview properly.
HR interviews are very common. You will be talking to people who are too beautiful to actually be engineers, and this is bad for your social life and self-esteem but good for your success probabilities. They aren’t actually technical people, from what I’ve seen, and don’t go deep into details. In fact, they might even give flat-our wrong descriptions of what the job entails. The plus-side of this is that they don’t have very intricate understandings of what you do, and will judge you against a list of keywords and question-answer dictionaries. If you honestly cannot answer the questions they ask you, you suck as an engineer and should not be wasting their time. Learn the basics of what is involved in interviews and your future work, so that you don’t start umm-ing and uhh-ing when they ask you what the time complexity of quick-sort is.
Additionally, behave like a human and hide your desperation to escape your terrible life situation. You can be honest about some things (I want to work in your company because I see a lot of growth and I don’t like my current one), but you need to be diplomatic (I don’t actually give a shit about your company, I just need a way to escape my shithole third-world country). I know people who have said the latter, and, unsurprisingly, they were not successful. You need to research a little before interviews, figuring out things like company culture, the pros and cons of where their office is located, and their tech stack. These three are usually enough to craft a story for why you are applying. If you’re lucky, as I have been, they might even make you more excited to apply. And if what you find really repels you, you need to prepare yourself for the fact that you might not be a good fit here, and the people interviewing you might catch onto that. it is their job, after all, and just because they aren’t technical doesn’t mean they are stupid.
Look up the questions you might be asked here. Describe a situation where you had to solve a problem. Give an example of a mistake you made. How did you deal with an annoying colleague? Tell me your weaknesses. Notice how all of these prompts can easily lead you down a path of negativity. This is something you need to avoid in interviews, and also in life. Find the positives. Spin losses into wins. Spend less time on the problem than you do on the solution. This will make you a more pleasant person, a more useful coworker, and a more successful interviewee. Sure, tell them about a weakness you have (be honest, and don’t say you are a perfectionist or some transparent non-answer like that), but then tell them the impact it had on your life/job, how you overcame it, and the results you see now. This shows that you don’t just twiddle your thumbs in the face of adversity, instead you analyse the situation, figure out a game-plan, and get shit done. You even assess results to see if what you did was enough, or if more effort is required. In other words, you’re a problem solver. Isn’t that sexy?
Speaking of sexy, think of interviewing like dating. You want this other person to like you. So become a person they will like. Think about what they want, and show them that. Give them an answer based on that. If you can afford to be honest and selective, then all the more power to you, but the truth is the vast majority of us don’t have that luxury in our early careers. Especially when we have disadvantages like weak passports, or irrelevant experience, or non-glamorous degrees. We need to mould ourselves to get the job. I did it, and I don’t regret it. It opens the path to better things.
Sorry about the digression. Read those prompts I wrote above, and search online to find more. Think about what you would ask if you were an interviewer (it’s okay if you don’t have enough interviewing experience to come up with something). Have answers for each question. Even better, have a whole over-arching story that you can pick and choose incidents from. You won’t get this right the first time, but you will refine this over the course of many interviews. You can then just pick and choose items from your story to satisfy any prompt. I had this in my arsenal, and it was very powerful. The best thing is, you’re not really cheating. You’re not tricking the interviewers into thinking your’re a good person, or good engineer, or good interviewee. By doing all of this, you are becoming better in earnest.
In short, show enough intellect to the HR interviewers to assure them that you aren’t an idiot, and behave like enough of a person to assure them that you aren’t a block of wood. Smile, say hi and bye, show a genuine interest in them and the company, and don’t be a snarky asshole like I’m being here (I only write like this every once in a while to get my frustrations out, nobody wants to be around somebody like this in real life). If they think you are cool (for an engineer), you will be allowed to pass on.