Tagged: geeks
How to Level Up
I regularly hear from and read about technologists in a career rut. Unless one is both lucky and adept at predicting the future, experiencing some temporary stall can happen to professionals at any career stage. It may be the feeling of being stuck in an unchallenging role, feeling burdened by an undesirable skill set, or trapped in a company that seems difficult to escape.
Career stagnation in technology could be defined as a prolonged period characterized by limited project variety, no advancement or even lateral movement, few tangible accomplishments, and little exposure to any emerging trends. Some managers are aware that workers in these situations generally leave, so the managers may proactively try to satisfy staff by shuffling teams and providing more interesting tasks. Many managers have to focus on deliverables and may give little thought to the career development of their charges, perhaps throwing money at retention problems instead of providing challenges.
To “level up” could mean a promotion into management or technical leadership, a new start at a firm with increased opportunity, a role with autonomy and decision-making responsibility, or the ability to make significant improvements to skills and marketability. People that think about the leveling up concept often know what they want (or sometimes what they don’t want), but don’t necessarily see the best paths to get there.
Leverage the skills you have to get the skills you want
Most professionals view their current skills as a means to getting new jobs, but it’s useful to also think about skills as the key to acquiring other new skills. This tactic is most relevant when a skill set is dated and a previously strong marketability level is now questionable. Some will attempt to make a clean and immediate break from their old technologies or responsibilities into the new, usually with mixed results.
As an example, many COBOL programmers tried to enter the stronger Java job market following Y2K. Some applied to jobs with no Java experience hoping their COBOL years would be deemed transferrable, while others pursued certifications and self-study to ideally be viewed as a somewhat “experienced” hire. One overlooked strategy was to approach companies that were using both COBOL and Java in some capacity, with the understanding that the candidate was willing to write COBOL if provided the ability to also work with Java.
Most job seeking technologists have at least one ability that will help them contribute immediately to any other team or organization. It could be an obscure technical skill, leadership experience, or domain knowledge. Even if the skill is not something the person wants to use forever, it could be a key component to getting hired. Try to identify companies that may be looking for some specific expertise you can provide, even if it isn’t the most attractive tool in your bag, and be transparent about your willingness to do that less desirable work in exchange for exposure to skills that are in demand.
DIY
For those in the most stagnant of technical environments, taking on independent projects or open source may be the best way to gain experience and increase marketability. It’s usually preferable to learn new things on the job (because money), but being proactive about your career and keeping abreast of current marketable technologies will also show initiative to potential employers. The level up from personal projects almost always comes from an employment change.
Sometimes to level up you need to take a step back – or sideways
Careers aren’t always linear, and the expectation that trajectory needs to follow a strict continuous and incremental level of responsibilities is perhaps naive and potentially dangerous. Job seekers are often prone to placing too much weight on a position’s salary or (gasp) title without fully considering the position’s potential opportunity as it relates to future marketability and career development. Somewhat frequent movement between jobs is accepted in our industry, so positions can be viewed as stepping stones to future opportunities.
When evaluating new roles, whether with a current employer or another firm, imagine what a three or four year tenure in that role at that company will look like on future résumés. Will the skills likely to be acquired or improved in that role be marketable and transferrable to other firms? Accepting positions that come with lateral responsibility and compensation is usually a wise long-term decision when provided a more favorable learning and growth environment.
Would You Hire the CS Class of ’04 Today?
A comment in a Reddit computer science career advice forum got me thinking. There was mention about the high volume of advice in the forum coming from inexperienced people relative to advice from industry veterans. The comment that got my attention (which I believe was made by an experienced person) was:
And most of the people giving advice in this sub¹ are 10+ year veterans who, if they had only the skills they had when they first got hired 10 years ago, could never get hired in today’s market.
So could the college class of ’04 couldn’t get hired in today’s tech talent market? That’s an interesting topic for debate, and your age likely influences which side you choose.² Of course, ‘skills‘ could be interpreted as overall engineering chops (concepts that are language/tool agnostic), or ‘skills’ could refer to ’04 grads having dated skills for today’s market. I sense the commenter intended the former, as the latter doesn’t seem worth mentioning. Either way, my opinion is the same.
For most cases, my answer on whether they could get hired today is ‘Probably not’.
This is not to say that the class of ’04 or even 1994 were lesser engineers upon graduation, and those critical of our increased reliance on tools will make arguments to the contrary. The résumé of the typical ’04 grad would have difficulty getting interviews when pitted against today’s graduates, based on ’14 trends for entry-level candidates. Entering the work force with some level of perceived accomplishment (via internships or personal projects) is becoming a rather reasonable expectation even among average tech employers, to the point where graduates that lack experience or tangible evidence of their ability openly lament their (mostly irrational) fear of being unemployable.³
If we look at the difference between these graduates of ten years apart, we discover how quickly both available resources and industry expectations have changed. How would ’04 grads fare against today’s candidates? It’s interesting to explore how different things were.
How did they learn to code? How much ‘experience’ do they have?
It sounds kind of odd to me, but someone as young as 35 might not have seen a decent web browser until college. The class of ’04 hit puberty when Windows 95 was released, were likely to reference books/manuals (BBS/Usenet perhaps), had limited access to like-minded individuals, and coded on machines dwarfed in power and memory thousands of times over by today’s mobile phone.
The class of ’14 had fully functional browsers and search capability by middle school, and relatively cheap computing power. It would have required unique circumstances for those in the ’04 class to enter college with coding experience, but many in the class of ’14 could have had exposure at a younger age. When I ask recent grads when they started coding, it’s common to hear “in high school”.
What did they do when stumped?
Volumes of reference material and educational content were available to the ’14 grads that were not in ’04. Stack Overflow has become the programmer’s best friend, and that best friend still celebrates birthdays at Chuck E. Cheese – it is barely five years old. ’14 grads could access answers much quicker than those from ‘o4, but many would argue whether that access over time makes for better engineers.
The class of ’04 grew up with search engines too, but how much relevant content was there to search? And how difficult would it be to actually find that content given the search engines of the time? The need for trial and error is dying, and it’s reasonable to assume that death hastened between these two graduating classes.
How did they differentiate their ability from others when competing for jobs?
You’ve got a pretty solid GitHub, eh? ’14 graduates could browse and contribute to thousands of open source repos and create their own all through college. GitHub obviously wasn’t the first destination for repos, but hiring managers didn’t usually ask to “see your SourceForge” in ’04. The ease and expectation of showing past code to hiring entities is a relatively new concept.
It’s become normal for many grads to have blogs, robust sites, or even a mobile app or basic product when entering the workforce. The current boot camp trend produces graduates that usually claim an app. Apple’s App Store had 500 third-party apps around launch in 2008, and now between Apple and Google there are nearly two million. How many of those were developed for the purpose of job hunting?
Websites and blogs were more difficult to publish and expensive to maintain before the recent trend of free hosting and tools. It was uncommon for entry-level candidates to list sites or blogs on a résumé ten years ago.
How do they look for jobs? Did they even have to look?
If we are going to compare the ability for two graduating classes to get jobs, we should consider that methods to hiring and job search have also changed dramatically. Job boards like Monster and Dice existed in ’04 to post a résumé, but were primarily used by the most active job seekers and not for passive/ongoing job searches.
LinkedIn can help to both find people and then store contacts, with the added bonus of making users discoverable to potential employers – but LinkedIn only became available in ’03. Networking just a decade ago was more time consuming, while internships have become the norm for engineering students in recent years. Today’s graduate often has made at least a few potentially valuable industry contacts to use during a first job search.
Even if you were to get an interview in ’04, you went in blind. The amount of information regarding the interview process at a variety of companies is abundant, from best-selling interview question books to sites like Glassdoor. Job search has undergone quite a facelift, with unlimited supports in place to help job seekers identify interesting employers, demonstrate skills, and succeed in interviews.
Conclusion
Without trying to get into any debates as to whether colleges are producing better or worse engineers than they were ten years ago, it would be very difficult for ’04 grads to compete with ’14 grads in today’s market based on evolving expectations and changes in what CS students do during college. What might the résumés of CS grads in the class of ’24 look like?
¹ The shorthand ‘sub‘ is short for ‘subreddit‘, which is the name Reddit uses for various channels or forums.
² For the sake of transparency, my age is closer to the college class of ’94.
³ Source: see perhaps 25% of the posts at that same Reddit forum)
Why You Can’t Work For Google
Many new entrants to today’s technology job market are obsessed with the handful of high-profile companies that set the trends in the industry, and the next generation of software engineers seem to think that the only companies worth working for are Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, and Amazon. Software development has become both a celebrity culture (where companies and their CEOs are the stars) and an oligarchy in the eyes of recent graduates and teens, who set their sights on employment with this small number of firms. Young developers in foreign countries appear to be particularly susceptible to this hyperfocus on a tiny segment of the hiring market. If you don’t know how widespread this is, I’d suggest a visit to Reddit’s CS Career Questions section to see what people are asking.
When Yahoo changed their remote work policy the web exploded in debate around the value of remote employees, and the more recent news around Google dismissing GPAs, test scores and answers to Fermi questions made many tech companies reconsider their hiring procedures. Not a day passes where a piece on one of these companies doesn’t hit the front page of most major news sites. A cottage industry has erupted with authors and speakers providing guides for aspiring engineers to create résumés, land interviews and answer technical questions to get jobs specifically at these companies. The focus seems to be less about becoming skilled and more about being attractive to a specific subset of employers.
These companies are glamorized amongst budding engineers much like Ivy League and top-tier schools are with high school students, and the reason you probably won’t work for Google is the same reason you probably didn’t go to MIT. Because they are highly selective, and they simply can’t hire everyone.
Of course some of you can and perhaps will work for Google and the other companies listed here, just as some of you may have attended top universities. But the majority of you us won’t – and that’s OK. Follow your dreams, but be realistic about the outcome.
So here comes the good news! Beyond Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Amazon, there are hundreds of awesome places to work that are highly regarded by engineers the world over, and most people outside the industry (and many inside) haven’t heard of most of them. Experience with these shops, much like the above list, will get you noticed. Companies like Netflix, LinkedIn, Salesforce, eBay and GitHub are well-known but not typically mentioned in the same breath as the top celebrity firms, though they certainly could be. I’d venture that most college CS majors haven’t even heard of 37signals or Typesafe, where smaller teams are doing work that is regularly recognized by the engineering community.
And again the bad news. You probably won’t work for these companies either. For most of the world, these are still reach schools that employ relatively few. Although they may not be held by the general public in the same esteem as that list up top, they are incredibly selective, and most in the industry will view the difference between this group and the Googles as incredibly slim.
And now for some more good news. Beyond the lists of companies above are thousands of great places to work that I guarantee you have never heard of. These may consist of startups that fly under the radar or smaller specialized technology companies that serve a niche market. They could be the development groups for major banks or 25 year old mom and pop shops that have an established customer base and solid revenues. Game developers, ecommerce sites, consulting firms, robotics – the list goes on.
In almost every city, this group is the one that employs the overwhelming majority of engineers. This is where most of us will likely end up – a company that you will surely need to describe and explain to your parents and significant other.
In the city where I focus my business (Philadelphia) and run our Java Users’ Group, we have some Googlers and I’ve known engineers who have worked for Amazon, Yahoo, and Apple. And I know many many others who either turned down offers or likely could have joined those companies, but chose instead to work somewhere else. Just as some students may reject the offer from the top-rated school to stay closer to home or to accept a more attractive scholarship package, many of the world’s top engineers simply don’t work for Google or Facebook, or anywhere else in the Valley for that matter.
Philadelphia is by no means Silicon Valley, yet there is a fairly robust startup scene and a large number of software shops that are doing valuable work. Over the past 15 years I’ve worked with hundreds of Philly companies to hire engineering talent, and 99% of these places would be unknown to the typical developer. I almost always have to describe my clients to potential candidates, as most of these shops have not built a reputation yet, and these are firms ranging from 20 to perhaps 20,000 employees. And the vast majority of them are great environments for technologists where developers work alongside at least a few top engineers that could (and some that did) pass the entrance requirements for the Googles and Facebooks of the world.
All the great engineers in the world aren’t in the Valley, and they don’t all work for Google. This fact is obvious to most, but fewer than I’d expected and hoped. If that is the goal, go after it. The rest of us will be here if it doesn’t work out.
Job Tips For GEEKS: The Job Search DRM-free ebook is available for just $2.99 – more info here.
Why You Didn’t Get The Interview, Part II
In August 2012 I published a blog post Why You Didn’t Get The Interview, which received a good bit of attention from readers and was republished a few times (most notably by Lifehacker). Of course one article could not list every possible explanation that an employer or recruiter might use to discard a résumé, so I decided to revisit the topic once again. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list, but rather an addendum to the previous post that may help explain a lack of response to your job search.
No submittal content – Online applications often consist of several fields and check boxes that don’t always give job seekers an opportunity to express interest or differentiate themselves. However, when you send a résumé via email or are provided some space within an online application to craft a custom message, you are foolish not to take advantage. Simply sending a résumé without any supporting information about your experience or interest in the job comes across as lazy or aloof, and can give the appearance that a job seeker is simply blasting résumés indiscriminately (perhaps even in an automated fashion). SOLUTION: Tell the employer at least one or two things that drew your attention to the job and company.
Multiple applications to the same employer for vastly different roles – Sometimes I will open my inbox and find an email from a job seeker about one job that could possibly be a fit, and then find another four or five emails from the same applicant for other jobs that are not remotely connected to the candidate’s experience. This applicant may have received some attention if he/she only sent the one semi-targeted application, but the additional blind stabs have too many negative implications. It typically signifies either a lack of self-awareness regarding qualifications, immaturity, or desperation. SOLUTION: Before submitting your résumé, check several of the company’s listings to make sure that you are applying for the one or two jobs that best fit your experience and goals. If you have a strong desire to work for a specific employer, sending a targeted application to one or two listings is much more effective than spamming your résumé to all of their vacant slots.
Many small red flags – My original article last year referenced 14 fairly obvious reasons that job seekers are not interviewed, but often it’s not that simple. Many times a résumé/application package will contain a handful of items that would not be a problem when considered individually, but when combined add up to a rejection. The recruiter or hiring manager will feel that too many special circumstances would have to occur that make the candidate’s hire unlikely. Perhaps a candidate has a slightly elevated salary expectation, requires relocation assistance, is minimally qualified, and lacks any easily identifiable positive indicators of talent or ability that stand out from others. An applicant with only one of those characteristics would likely be considered, but the aggregate picture makes it too much of a longshot. SOLUTION: There is no real fix to this. You could always try to explain what could be perceived as a red flag. For example, if you are relocating to a specific area, make it clear why you are looking in that specific market to avoid being viewed as someone open to jobs worldwide. Displaying some level of interest or passion for the employer could also help overcome objections and get you a shot.
Personal reputation and your employer’s reputation – It shouldn’t surprise anyone that if you apply to firms where people either know you or are connected to those that do, a decision to interview will typically be based on how these contacts feel and talk about you. However, your employer’s reputation may also come into play here as well. If a particular company has interviewed multiple former employees of your firm without much success, chances are they will not waste time interviewing another. As a recruiter, it is fairly common for companies to tell me “Unless they are outstanding I’m not overly interested in candidates from COMPANY, as we see many and have not had any luck.” Your company’s reputation is more likely to work in your favor if you are employed by a firm known for having talent, but it seems the trend to discriminate against employees of certain shops continues. I wrote about this a bit in a past post regarding discrimination by startups against workers from large enterprises. SOLUTION: Keep your personal reputation in mind when dealing with co-workers and particularly when leaving jobs. Minimize stints at employers that have a negative reputation in your market.
Inconsistency – This can be the result of discrepancies between a résumé and cover letter/application, between a résumé and LinkedIn profile, or just something fishy in the résumé itself. If you changed professions more often than Barbie (impressive list) or have travailed up the corporate ladder and come back down multiple times, your application will raise suspicions. Candidates that list titles progressing from CTO to CEO and then down to Junior Developer will be scrutinized. SOLUTION: There isn’t anything you can do to change the past, but explanations could go a long way if you left an industry to pursue a passion. Make sure all of your online profiles match your résumé details before sending applications. Try to use job titles that reflected your actual duties if you worked for a small firm and had an inflated title. Even if you were CEO or CTO of your dorm room software company, it may not be helpful to list the job that way.
“Meh“ – Your qualifications and history are virtually identical to the others in the stack of résumés received. You may have met what was listed on the job spec, but so did everybody else. This is of particular importance for jobs where it is expected that most applicants will have similar qualifications, such as entry-level positions for new graduates or jobs that list highly generic specifications. SOLUTION: There has to be something different about you that you can add to give some positive spin to your candidacy. Review the requirement again and try to find an area where your background exceeds the expectation, or a specific experience you have that others probably don’t.
My ebook Job Tips For GEEKS: The Job Search was recently released and is available for $9.99 (reduced to $6.99 in December 2013) on iTunes, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, and Kobo. I can provide a PDF version for sale by request.
Rethink Career Path
The baby boomer generation probably helped define the image of career path and trajectory for many Gen X and Millennials that followed. It was incredibly common for the baby boomer to remain with one company for their entire career, possibly move up the proverbial corporate ladder, and retire with a pension. The typical baby boomer’s lifespan may have looked like
college/military → entry-level → low level management → higher level management → retirement with pension
For engineers, the problems of traditional career paths may be compounded. To ‘move up’ and maximize earnings often means getting further from what you do best or enjoy (code) and the result may be to leave jobs more often than you should. Management responsibility is not always on the engineer’s wish list, yet that direction may be the best way to earn more. There is a career point where salaries plateau, and switching employers becomes unsustainable as a method of increasing earnings.
Considering that statistics show the younger generations are typically switching employers every three years, two things are clear:
- Employer loyalty is dead, and has been replaced by either loyalty to one’s own career (hopefully this is the case) or just the need for new challenges (boredom).
- We need to start looking at alternative employment and earning models, career path, and trajectory in a different way.
Entry-level and junior candidates in the tech industry often ask how long they should stay at any given job, how to get into management roles, or what options they have in their career given a certain set of skills. I’m always amused when entry-level developer candidates inquire about getting into management, as if they are trying to get out of coding before they’ve written one line. It seems that most are focusing their questions based around traditional baby boomer type standards of career path and earning, while very few are even considering what alternatives may exist. “Layoff victim? Go find another job, of course!” “Not making enough money? Get promoted or find someone to pay you more!”
Aren’t there some other possibilities that one might at least consider? In technology, the range of opportunities for earning are substantial and alternatives to the standard employer/employee mindset are somewhat vast.
As opposed to approaching your career as simply the search for new jobs, think about career for just a minute as a collection of ways to earn money while building your skills and marketability. One of those ways is obviously to take a full-time job slinging code for the bank or insurance company. That works for many people.
But what if your job isn’t paying you enough? Naturally, you either try to get a promotion (which for engineers is often into a role that may make you less happy) or you go out and get a new employer. Did it ever cross your mind, even for a second, to get a second job? This second job could take on several shapes, so perhaps we should call it a second source of revenue so we don’t lead people to believe this will require 80 hours a week.
Or what if your job is not fulfilling professionally? Do you ever hear about actors who will take peanuts to do the indie films they want and make up for it by doing a few summer blockbuster movies for millions? This isn’t a perfect analogy, but it’s a valuable mindset. I know independent contractors who may have three or four clients at one time, with varying hourly levels of commitment to each, different rates, and a range of project technologies. It’s not easy to do, but it can be done.
If your day job is technically unfulfilling or not providing the necessary financial rewards, at least consider some of these possible options before taking the usual steps (listed by perceived level of difficulty, starting with least difficult).
Day job + moonlighting (contract) – Could you make a few extra bucks and perhaps learn a new skill through a paid side project ? If you have contacts that own businesses, they may be a good source for this type of work. This could cure both your boredom at the day job and being underpaid.
Contracting – It seems the decision to go into contracting is often not made consciously, but rather based around a specific opportunity that leads to a contract and then an acquired appreciation for the lifestyle and money. A proactive approach to entering contracting as a full-time endeavor is probably more effective, as you need to think like a business owner.
Contracting, multiple concurrent clients – This usually requires having a widely respected set of technical skills (a ‘name’), a network, and some basic business knowledge (not to mention time management and negotiating knowledge). Not easy, but something to strive for and aspire to be. Doing 50 hours of remote work a week on three different projects and getting paid for every single hour is probably fairly enticing for most.
Day job (full-time or contracting) + product – Could you supplement your primary income by creating some sort of product for sale? Your product could be mobile apps, a web app with a subscription model, or even a tech book. This could be time intensive at first and obviously requires some creativity for ideas, but also financially rewarding.
These alternative arrangements are not for everyone, and they may come with some associated risk. The world of employment, especially tech pros, has changed significantly over the past two decades. It’s time to start thinking differently about career paths and traditional employer/employee models. Whether or not these options are right for you, they are worthy of consideration.
Job Tips For GEEKS: The Job Search is out and available in most ebook formats. See the book page for more info on where to buy.
Alternative Jobs For Bored Web/App Developers
I’ve recently seen a spate of engineers declaring boredom and/or dissatisfaction with their current roles and responsibilities, which leads them to openly question what options are available. Perhaps building accounting software products or maintaining the web presence of an insurance firm just isn’t inspiring you to get out of bed anymore. This problem isn’t unique to the software industry (and based on a 2003 Joel On Software post, not necessarily new), but whenever a professional invests years of their life getting an education and honing their skills, it can be daunting to think that the time was somewhat wasted.
Thankfully, if you are losing your passion for typical web or software development, your training and experience have at least in part prepared you for several alternative roles that perhaps you have not considered. It seems that frustrated developers tend to weigh their options as stay in development or leave the industry, without considering the fact that these other alternatives exist. If the source of discontentment is tied to the role of app or web dev work (and not the overall tech industry), there are some relatively new roles that have become more in demand that may satisfy the itch you have.
This information may also be useful to new entrants into the market and grads that are wondering what they can do with their computer science degree other than just stereotypical development roles.
Here are some examples (some have crossover and similarity):
Performance Engineer – This role isn’t about building a product, but rather improving speed, scalability and reliability. Performance engineers may be thinking about databases or monitoring tools one day and hardware or operating systems the next. It is a highly technical and specialized role with increasing market demand.
QA Automation Engineer – QA is one discipline that seems to have gone through some significant changes over the course of my career (15 years). In the late 90’s, QA meant large teams of manual testers and high demand mostly attributed to the Y2K scare (history lesson for the young). At some point thereafter it became the norm to outsource QA overseas, making QA a lost art in the US and thus making QA talent significantly harder to find. Over the past couple years, there seems to be some resurgence of demand for QA to be performed domestically, and hires typically will be expected to have some automation and scripting experience.
DevOps Engineer – This is another role that has been growing due to the number of shops that like to deploy frequently. As the trend in delivery will not be changing anytime soon, the ability to automate the process will continue to be in demand.
Configuration, Release, or Build Manager/Engineer – As the look of development teams has progressed from crowded shops to remote employees, combined with the popularity of cloud-based computing, the concept of configuration management is changing. Demand for talent in these areas is relatively steady.
Embedded Systems and Firmware Engineer – Although the transition from your typical app or web developer position may be a bit more complex, one should expect growth in embedded systems to continue as the variety and sheer number of devices continues to increase. The concepts of ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things are getting one step closer to reality every day, and engineering talent with a unique set of skills will be required.
Project Manager, Technical Writer, Business Analyst – Having a coding background can make the move into any of these jobs a bit easier, and your appreciation for development should maximize your shot at being successful.
Before abandoning the years you have invested in learning how to code, consider whether or not you may be happy in a different role that enables you to reuse many of the skills you have already developed.
My ebook Job Tips For Geeks: The Job Search has been released and is now available in most formats. See the book page for details.
How to (Partially) Control Your Technical Interview
ebook now available
Generally speaking, when you walk into an interview you are at the mercy of the interviewers. Although you may be given some general information regarding the interview format and probably have an idea about the questions or exercises you may encounter, there are endless possibilities on the topics you may be asked about over a two or three hour session.
As was stated before, any item on your résumé is fair game, so one way to potentially avoid queries on unfamiliar topics is to keep those words off your résumé. Regardless of what is or isn’t on your résumé, it is quite likely that you will be asked questions pertaining to subjects that are not within your areas of expertise. Trying to fully eliminate the exposure of certain vulnerabilities is an exercise in futility, but there is one rather effective method to at least attempt to mitigate the risks.
There is an increasing trend in the technical hiring world for employers to request firm evidence of a candidate’s abilities that go beyond what a traditional résumé includes. For programmers, this typically can be achieved through a code sample. Front-end designers and developers may be expected to show off some UI or website that they built, and architects may be asked to share documents. Mobile developers may hear this more than any other group, and are routinely asked “Do you have any apps available?” as part of the vetting process.
One way to partially control the content and direction of your interview is to provide interviewers a work sample that will presumably become a point of discussion. This will turn what could be a technical interrogation into a version of show and tell. Even if the exchange about your sample only takes fifteen minutes, that is fifteen minutes of the interview where you hopefully will shine, and it is fifteen minutes less time for the interviewers to delve into other topics that are probably less familiar.
To employ this tactic, be sure to make it known at some point early in the process that you have samples of your work for review by request. A GitHub link at the top of your résumé, a URL to download your mobile app, or a link to sites that you developed are much more graceful than large file attachments. You can choose to extend an invitation to view these projects as early as your résumé submission, and when scheduling the interview you can express your willingness to discuss the projects in more detail and offer to bring a laptop with samples.
Independently volunteering to show representations of what you have produced will give an employer the impression that you are both willing and able to demonstrate the quality of your work. That act makes the applicant appear more open and trustworthy than someone who hesitates when asked for some samples. Recruiters and hiring managers alike will welcome résumé submissions that are accompanied by additional supporting evidence of a candidate’s abilities.
When you enter the interview, you can mention that you brought samples to show if the team is interested in seeing your work. This will typically be received quite positively and could lead to a deep dive into familiar territory.
This post is an excerpt from the recently released ebook Job Tips For GEEKS: The Job Search, available to purchase from Amazon. A sample from the iBook in PDF format can be found here.
Job Tips For Geeks 