Optimize HighTech Customer Service Management with airSlate SignNow

How to create outlook signature

I know a person with a master's degree in computer science that is delivering pizzas it's tough out there right now you've applied to so many jobs they all blend together into one big giant entity that you both can't stop thinking about and also hasn't called you back you spend all this time going to school and there aren't any entry-level jobs or maybe you just got laid off the severance package is about to run out and the bills are starting to pile up the job market was so hot just 18 months ago what happened I know it's rough out there so I made this video to help if you're new to the channel my name is Steve win and I'm an L7 principal software engineer basically I make videos that I wish existed when I was coming up in the industry I've never really had to search for a job because I've spent my entire 18-year career at Amazon but I have been on the other side of the table reviewing resumés doing phone screens and conducting interviews I've conducted over 850 technical interviews for Amazon I'm a bar raiser and I've trained over a th000 people within the company on how to conduct and assess talent and I've seen a ton of failure modes that are really pretty easy to avoid so I'll share these lessons with you in this video before I get to my first point let's compare two hypothetical people in a thought experiment Alice and Bob both are recent graduates and are looking for jobs in today's tough Market Bob has machine guned his resume to hundreds of job openings after he wakes up in the morning he spends his days applying to more jobs scrolling videos online working on a leak code question about dynamic programming that he's been stuck on all week and playing video games Bob is pretty sure that he's doubled maybe triple applied to some jobs but it doesn't matter because they haven't called them back anyways then there's Alice Alice has a spreadsheet to track all of the jobs she's applied to before she applies she spends a bit of time understanding what each company does and what their needs are in a column on that spreadsheet she is constantly updating a resume and has several versions based on what type of role she's applying to she keeps a log of all of her job search activities like every time she's reached out to her network or when she hasn't heard back from referrals she's also systematic about the coding problem she's done and spends a bit of time learning The Core Concepts behind problems that give her her trouble she's always on the lookout for skills that might make her more attractive to employers currently she's learning all she can about AI even though she didn't really study it in school Alice gets started at 8:00 a.m. in the morning and she's done with her work by lunchtime afterwards she does whatever she wants given what you know about Alice and Bob who has the better chance of Landing a job I would bet my money on Alice and that's my first point you increase your chances of Landing a job by staying organized and being disciplined treat it like a part-time job that leads to a full-time job if you do it well taking a structured and disciplined approach doesn't mean going into monk mode it just means taking a couple hours of the day seriously getting dressed in the morning getting organized by tracking your activity or spreadsheets and focus on growing and showcasing your skills when the market starts to pick back up you want to be ready to go nobody knows when that will be but it will happen when Bob gets a call back for an interview he's going to have to cram to prepare as opposed to Alice who has kept her interviewing skills warm during the dry spell looking for a job especially your first one is an ambiguous and chaotic process you combat ambiguity and chaos with structure and discipline I'd like to take a moment to thank today's video sponsor dice the process of Landing a job has two discrete phases Landing the interview by getting noticed and then performing well enough for the interview to land an offer I've teamed up with dice to provide a comprehensive set of resources for both of these phes if you're looking for a job right now you need to leverage as many resources as you can especially high quality and free ones if you're struggling with resumé writing you're not alone I've seen so many terrible resumés in my career and they were all bad for different reasons there's a lot can go wrong dice has dozens of articles on how to craft effective resumés especially for Tech professionals your CV or resume is probably the only interaction that you'll have with many of the employers that you apply to you probably want to have several versions and you want each of them to stand out the articles are filled with templates samples and advice on how to create RS that will pop and will land you your next interview there are also dozens of articles on preparing for the interview side of things some articles that caught my eye are six ways to blow a job interview how to research a manager before the job and one on how to leverage your personal projectss and stories when looking for your first tech job the last one is especially useful for people straight out of school links to these articles and more can be found in the description thanks again to dice for sponsoring today's video and making all of these resources available for free before I highlight my second Point let me tell you the story of how I got my job at Amazon after college in 2006 I had a terrible time looking for work I was a good programmer and had a solid grasp of data structures and algorithms but because I lacked a computer science degree and any relevant job experience I wasn't getting any callbacks the only thing on my resume was when I worked at Chuck-E-Cheese during high school during my job search I was surprised to receive a call from a friend let's call him Connor who I hadn't heard from since high school Connor was currently working at Amazon and wanted to know if I wanted to meet up for a drink the reason he called was that he had just met a cooworker Heather and discovered that they grew up in the same town as I did but attended different high schools since it wasn't a large city they racked their brains trying to find people that they knew in common when my name came up I briefly dated Heather way back when and we parted on good terms and in high school I spent many hours helping Connor prepare for the AP Computer Science test in college they went on to major in computer science and ended up as sdes at Amazon working on adjacent teams over some fine craft Pacific Northwest beer in a dingi dive bar in Seattle I persuaded Connor to get me an interview at Amazon since I spent so much time back in high school helping him with the AP test he was able to secure me an interview and the rest is history the reason I'm telling you the story is because my second point the strength of the connections you have in your network can greatly increase the chances of Landing a job you may be saying to yourself but Steve I don't have a network you get a network by getting a job and I don't have a job it's a catch 22 well what I say to you is that you do have a network everybody has a network and so it's not a catch22 and I don't appreciate the attitude networking isn't about contacting everybody you know and asking and begging for a job it's about making sure your connections are strong for people that you already know do your family and friends all know that you're looking for work this may involve explaining to them what type of job you're looking for Uncle Daniel may not know anything about computers or the internet but he knows a ton of people at church and you can let them know that you're looking for work also make sure to keep your non- Tech connection strong as well if you went to college or did a boot camp you know people in the industry reach out to them ask them for advice and leads if they have a job ask for a referral it's not weird everyone that can help will help because in the future the tables might be turned it's not just about taking all the time but also giving can you help people in your Network maybe someone's trying to learn how to code and you can help them maybe you can introduce two people that you know with similar interests and career trajectories if you don't believe me about leveraging your network go ask people you know about how they got their jobs it's not just me a sizable amount of folks will tell you the same thing that they got their shot by using connections from their Network a referral from someone you know is the path of least resistance to Landing an interview who you know is greater than what you know but people can't help you if you don't reach out and tell them and if you get a referral please make sure to follow follow up since the economy has been in a downturn I've received a ton of requests for referrals at Amazon and I'm happy to help I tell them all the same thing go to the job's website and find an opening that's a good fit email the link to me along with your resume so I can submit a referral now I can't guarantee an interview but I can follow up internally to make sure you get a call back because I can follow up with the hiring manager or recruiter and out of all of the people that reached out to me only one person has actually sent me their resume and that person hasn't followed up to ask me about the status of their application it's going to require some follow through but not a lot so it's important to leverage your network and to stay organized before I get to my last point I want to tell you a story about someone I interviewed I went into the interview thinking that it was going to be a slam dunk they were a referral from someone I knew and I trusted at work they came from another highly respected tech company and were applying to the same role and level at Amazon the team they were applying to worked on the same type of backend systems that he had experience in it was essentially the same Tech stack and it totally made sense why they were leaving their old company he needed a mental health break and he was stuck working on maintaining a large and wonky code base the new team had an aggressive road map and wanted to ship a bunch of new stuff so he took 6 months off to recharge and to travel but here's the thing he completely bombed the interview every SE at Amazon has to demonstrate that they know how to code and it was clear to me that this person knew how to code but he didn't spend any time preparing for the interview and it wasn't just my interview it was Apparent from the entire Loop that he didn't prepare at all he had let his interview muscle atrophy and that's my third point you have to keep your interviewing skills warm even if you aren't getting any call backs remember there are two phases to getting a new job Landing the interview and Performing well enough in the interview to get an offer and at the start of your job search you probably went all out with preparing for the interview because of the lack of callbacks though you've let your interview preparation laps the secret is to leverage the science of learning and memory if you're familiar with the ebbing house forgetting curve you'll know that relearning something that you've learned in the past is going to take much less time than if you started from Square One what you relearn is also much more likely to be retained for longer the more times you review it so it's important to set time away every day to review things that you should already know pick some random leak code questions to make sure that they've been committed to long-term memory and schedule a mock interview every month or so with some friends that are also unemployed maintenance of things that you've already learned is going to cost like 5 to 10% of how long it took to learn something originally but if you let your form lapse you'll be like the guy I interviewed who is really well qualified but decided to skip any preparation during his time off which was a waste of time for involved if you found this video useful you need to make sure that you're well prepared for Behavioral interviews too it can be the difference between getting down leveled and losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars during the offer phase so check out my video on how to tell a good story