Hunter Johnson for Educative

Posted on Apr 28, 2023 • Originally published at educative.io

How to get hired as a software engineer in 2023

#career #careerdevelopment #programming #productivity

We've seen a lot of big changes happening in the tech industry over the past year — and hiring trends are evolving to keep up. We invited two tech recruiters with decades of experience placing software engineers and senior leaders to help us understand what's happening in the market. They also offered their best advice for software engineers hoping to get hired in 2023.

Chris Berta with the Laurel Group has spent 24 years in recruiting and in sales and marketing, and specializes in senior leadership searches for CTO and VP roles. Jill Vacanti is Client Engagement Partner at Mulberry Group and former Director of Talent Acquisition and Delivery at the Urgenci Group. She has experience recruiting across product, software sales, and marketing.

Between them, they have placed candidates at dozens of top tech companies including AWS, Splunk, and Suplari.

Today we will cover three topics:

Tech hiring trends in 2023
How hiring managers are currently searching for talent
Tips & tricks for engineers to stand out in a competitive market

We will also recommend some proven interview prep resources to help you excel in the informational and technical rounds of the software engineering interview loop.

Watch the full webinar here:

Tech hiring trends in 2023

After a troubling end to 2022, a year in which 157,000 people in the tech industry experienced layoffs, 2023 has only gotten worse. Layoffs have continued across the industry, mostly centering around larger tech companies. Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Stripe, and dozens of others have been affected.

But why is there so much upheaval, and why right now?

According to Berta and Vacanti, these current trends are a direct result of how much hiring was happening in the last few years, responding to rapid growth in the market. Meta, for example, grew 144% the last five years. Amazon grew over 100%. Alphabet grew by 89% and Microsoft by 69%. The reality is that these companies expected the market to continue along the growth trajectory that it was on, but then the market slowed.

The overall U.S. unemployment rate is still quite low, about 3.5%, which is what it was at the end of last year. So even though we have seen all the news about layoffs, there is still an active market for hiring.

Many companies, particularly smaller ones, are still hiring. In fact, smaller companies have a unique opportunity to bring on candidates with skill sets that they weren't able to bring on before. This used to be because they couldn't afford them or because the bigger companies had been gobbling them up as quickly as they could.

Engineers at smaller companies must demonstrate resourcefulness, ingenuity, and cross-functional communication and collaboration skills. Whereas engineers at larger companies are focused on a small slice of the overall picture, engineers at smaller companies often have to work cross-functionally and interact with many aspects of the product and codebase. These skill sets are increasingly in-demand and targeted by recruiters in the job search.

Berta and Vacanti also noted a few prominent industries where hiring has not slowed, like healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. The reality is that companies in these sectors need and want to utilize technology better. They are looking for that tech skill set that they may not have already, or that they can't build internally themselves. They are actively looking to the technology sectors to find that kind of knowledge.

We're seeing this evolution play out in various more “traditional” industries, like grocery chains and retail stores that need to leverage technology better to engage with their customers in a more meaningful way. They especially need to build out back-end systems to understand how to manage the massive consumer data that they're collecting. That means there are plenty of opportunities for tech-oriented candidates outside of traditional tech sectors — a trend that will only continue.

How hiring managers are currently searching for talent

Let’s take a peek behind the curtain. How does the hiring process work from a recruiting and staffing standpoint?

Individual Contributors:

Typically we see a lot of internal recruiting and talent acquisition teams managing searches for IC roles. Occasionally external staffing agencies will be brought in if there is a high volume of candidates and roles. Recruiters are active on job board websites, like CareerBuilder, Indeed, Monster, and especially LinkedIn.

One word of advice: if you identify a company that you're interested in, it's always a good idea to connect on LinkedIn with recruiters who work directly at that company. Don't be afraid to send them a message saying you are interested in their company, and would like to set up an informational call to just chat about any future potential opportunities. This is something you can do even while hiring is slower.

Senior Leaders:

At the executive level, most jobs are filled through networking. It often comes down to members of the executive team or board recognizing people in the industry who are outstanding in their craft and flagging them as a potential fit. Therefore, candidates who demonstrate thought leadership through blog posts, white papers, interviews, and presentations are building authority and recognition in their industry and positioning themselves well to get noticed.

Additionally, there are executive search companies that may help and augment those networking efforts. But ultimately the name of the game is building relationships with as many people as you can, pushing the network broader, and ultimately connecting with people who are decision makers.

Tips & tricks for engineers to stand out in a competitive market

For a role requiring a broader skill set at an attractive company, you might see up to 250 or 300 applications for each role. From a time perspective, it is impossible for the recruiters and hiring managers to talk with every candidate. This is where even one additional relevant skill or piece of experience on the profile, portfolio, or resume can make all the difference.

Here are some best practices for candidates to stand out in a highly competitive search.

Top 5 informational interview tips for individual contributors

1) Have a complete LinkedIn profile

LinkedIn is the #1 go-to tool for recruiters to source and screen candidates. Ensure that your LinkedIn profile is fully built out, including relevant experience, skill badges, recommendations, and keywords.

2) Be prepared during the first call

Show the recruiter that you are invested by doing your research on the company and role ahead of time.

3) Answer pre-screening questions completely

When you're applying directly to a company's website, make sure that you fill out any pre-screening questions thoughtfully. These questions typically include years of experience, technologies you have experience with, etc. Many times this is the first part of the application that the recruiting team will review.

4) Describe your leadership contributions

What additional responsibility have you taken on in your current role as an individual contributor? What experience do you have working cross-functionally or collaboratively within your team? Do you have the ability to train or mentor other team members?

5) Prepare a pitch with specific, targeted, relevant experience

Be prepared to share specific examples related to your experience and expertise. The more targeted you are — and the more specific examples you are able to provide — the better.

Top 5 informational interview tips for senior engineering leaders

1) Demonstrate thought leadership through speaking/writing

Interviews, articles, conference talks, and white papers are all great ways for candidates to showcase their thought leadership and expertise.

2) Show a track record of team leadership

Speak concretely to how you have managed teams, scaled teams, or navigated teams through reorgs or periods of adversity.

3) Collect strong recommendations from peers/direct reports

Endorsements and recommendations from people in your network go a long way, especially for those in leadership positions.

4) Highlight quantifiable business results

Speak to concrete business outcomes — what KPIs did you affect during your previous roles?

5) Showcase awards & patents

This demonstrates thought leadership in the same way that speaking/writing does.

How to prepare for technical interviews

When it comes to technical interview preparation, there are a few essential resources where candidates can start. We've broken these down by the coding and design portions of the technical interview loop.

Coding Interviews

Learn a pattern-based approach to acing your coding interview. Instead of spending your precious hours memorizing thousands of problems on LeetCode, practice with the fundamental patterns behind popular coding interview problems.

This strategic approach will not only save you time, but also hone the problem-solving skills that are so valued among programmers. Using these patterns in your interview prep will provide you with a sound framework to solve any problem you might encounter. Some of these coding patterns include:

Two Pointers
Sliding Window
In-place Reversal of a Linked List
Modified Binary Search
Dynamic Programming patterns

Start learning these critical coding interview patterns today with Grokking Coding Interview Patterns in Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, and Go, with more languages on the way!

Design Interviews

Design interviews have become a critical part of the interview loop for both engineers and managers in the past decade. Educative offers top resources for every level of the design interview.

Grokking the Low Level Design Interview Using OOD Principles:

You'll learn essential object-oriented concepts like design patterns and principles to ace the low-level object-oriented design interview. This interview is the "first level" of the overall design interview because low-level OOD deals with constructing the individual components within larger, more complex systems

Grokking the Principles and Practices of Advanced System Design:

On the opposite end of the design spectrum, the highest level of the design interview is the Advanced System Design interview. As opposed to low-level OOD, advanced System Design focuses on scaling high-level, complex, and real-world systems. In this course, you'll study real systems from top tech companies to gain a better understanding of scaling systems with various components.

Grokking the Modern System Design Interview for Engineers and Managers:

If you want to refresh your distributed system fundamentals before a big interview, check out this best-selling course that offers a bottom-up approach to designing scalable systems. Review the major building blocks of modern System Design and practice proven frameworks for designing scalable applications.

The Complete Guide to Grokking the API Design Interview:

The API design interview is a relatively new addition to the design interview loop. As APIs are a critical tool for designing and building new products, the API design interview has been rising in popularity for both hiring managers and junior developers. If you are interviewing for a front-end or back-end developer position, it is vital that you prepare to demonstrate your API knowledge and skills.

Get Interview Ready

With Educative, learning is always hands-on and text-based. Efficiently practice your skills in coding environments right in your browser. Most importantly, our courses set you up with the skills to excel in a tech interview and break into your dream career.