DEV Community: Luis Zugasti

Quality or quantity - tips to attain both in your job search

Luis Zugasti — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 00:09:13 +0000

Over the whole of this three-part series, I've outlined methodologies without outlining the tools underlying many of these techniques. In this final article, I'm going to focus on specific tools and how you can apply these tools in creative manners to maximize your productivity and keep high quality in your search.

That being said, if the following techniques don't really seem to apply to you, the whole takeaway from this post is that you can think of a job search as a software development project where you are the codebase that will be tested with every interview, and in this particular case, a codebase even a month stale will need a lot of refactoring to keep up with industry demand.

Use a Kanban board for tracking your job search

Keeping track of everything you have to do in your job search is really critical to overall success. It helps you determine your current velocity in terms of how many jobs you can apply to per week, how many hours a day of practice to coding you can devote, and how often you can give yourself some me time. It's important to offload this logistical responsibility to a concrete data store which is visually accessible. That way, you can focus on the task at hand rather than your deadlines.

The way I was able to achieve this was by using Trello, and you can find a sample board I made here. I won't go into depth about what Trello is, other than the fact that it makes a great Kanban tool and allowed me to treat my job search like a pipeline. The most important thing in this board was goal setting, of which I had 3 + 1 goals (the +1 is always implicit):

Complete my review of Elements of Programming Interviews (or in your case, whatever book/course of interview prep you are going for)
Reach out to potential contacts of interest in my job search
Track any requirements from companies in their job interview process 4 (implied). Keep a sane head and try to enjoy the job searching process. This was especially important given I was searching during the COVID-19 pandemic

So, how does the board work? It very loosely follows one of the main methods of Kanban - start with tasks that have to be done on the left, and progress through them towards the right.

The EPI Prescribed Chapters all start out from the left list as chapters I simply haven't touched. As I cover them, I move them through to review and finally, to chapters I feel whose concepts I've mastered. As you can tell, I didn't quite obtain this goal in my search, but having this board allowed me to verify my progress at a glance and plan accordingly.

Next is the Revised Daily Routine. It's just for show here, but allows me to revisit the schedule I set out for myself. I aimed for nine to ten hours each day of effective productivity. Creating something like this in a personal calendar is good practice, too.

Questions to ask and Wishlist are scratch boards for me to place questions in advance to an interview, and make notes. Specific tasks, when done, would be moved to the "done" board. I set deadlines for these, which makes it easier to find by date instead of what task I did - this is effective when hearing back from employers after a relatively long time (1-2 week turnaround time).

This board is by no means perfect, and not exhaustive. However, that's the beauty of a tool like Trello. Add subtasks that you feel are important, and remove those that aren't. Try to aim for at most five explicit goals in your search, since that will be manageable (technically there are six, always, always remember the implicit goal of keeping a sane head).

When you land a job, don't archive the board. Look back at it after one or two months. This will bring new insight into the work you did, and potentially inspire you to share your experienceon a blog like Dev.to, which is a win-win situation. :)

Find a Playlist and stick to it

If you're a budding engineer you know the imporance of finding flow in your work. I particularly find amazing productivity when I plop my headphones and listen to Acid Jazz. That's just me, but this is really important for your job search. Even if you decide to not use a board from the previous section and decide to only focus on, say, working on a personal portfolio project, having something to soothe your ears will benefit greatly.

This is purely anecdotal evidence I'm providing here - the overall gist of this point is to find a way of getting in the zone in your job search and do as much as you can to prevent breaking that flow of work.

It won't be perfect.

You'll have to manage shifting your workflow from working on a technical challenge to talking to HR for a phone screen. Some days, you'll devote a ton of time networking on LinkedIn and attending virtual/in-person meetups. Some weekends you'll be hacking away at an app. Finding what gets you in the flow for each of these things is critical to not only success in the job search but work as a developer in general.

If you're having trouble finding a good starting playlist, I found Electro Choc from GTA IV to be a remarkable companion.

Find a workout routine and embed it into your Pomodoros

When I initially started my job search, I was not the most active person. I'd go on somewhat infrequent bike rides and spend a lot of time in front of the computer. Both of these activities usually happend in long durations, with little breaks - thanks to this, I'd spend long periods sitting down!

When I found the Pomodoro technique, I figured: Alright, this is a good idea to be able to get some intense work done in short amounts of time, as well as take meaningful breaks. What did those meaningful breaks turn into? Browsing my phone and lying idle on my bed. Although I could sense that during my pomodoros I was more productive, I found I was more productive if I tried to do a one minute plank during a short pomodoro break.

The exercise doesn't have to be strenuous and you don't even have to break a sweat - however, I found that after a break with some exercise in it, I'd come back to a problem feeling refreshed, willing to give it another shot. I eventually changed my pomodoro schedule to include a short bike ride a day around the block. Even in recent months, I was able to perform a quick five minute upper body drill.

Closing thoughts

There's so much more I have to talk about in regards to tools used in the job search. Start off with these and tell me what you think. If they don't suite you, feel free to change up the strategy. Be flexible - and, if you like, spice things up sometimes. Split a day up into emailing people in the morning, then working through a coding competition in the afternoon, and maybe some video games in the evening (or what have you). Don't let your job search get stale - it is your job search, after all - and I hope this series of articles has helped you in your search.

Till next time,

Luis

All the posts in this series

Part 1

Part 2

Maintaining momentum in the job search.

Luis Zugasti — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:59:53 +0000

Last week's post covered a few key aspects that helped me survive my job search. In this week's post, I'll cover the importance of maintaining momentum on your job search while you overcome rejection.

Rejections are a part of the job hunting process, especially so for developer roles. You will have to learn how to deal with them and steer past them. Spending too much time and energy on rejections is the least efficient use of your time, as it hampers momentum from your job search as well as other aspects of your life.

When I talk about momentum, I talk about the feeling of flow you get when you've been working on a piece of software for about a half hour or so. You're in the zone. If you face a bug in your unit test, you dive right in to fix it, make sense of it, and improve the code base as a result. Rejections are the same, and when I faced them in my job search, I took a hint and devised a set of more effective tactics to lead to better success in my job search. The advice here will help you to maintain momentum and enjoy your jobsearch.

Pitfall - Think that you're going to hear back from every position you apply to

From just anecdotal experience, I heard back from about thirty or so employers to make it to the next round, from over 400 applications (around a ten percent success rate). Not hearing back can be due to a wide variety of factors - large applicant pool, dynamic company budgets, or simply bad luck. Even worse, my number of callbacks remained at zero for a long time. It was like I was playing darts, but always missing the board. Once I took control, I started hitting bulls' eyes.

I recommend to apply to tons of jobs - Set up a job alert on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and ten of your favourite companies (if they should offer that functionality on their portal). Do create a separate email account for this (name it mail.list or something like that), so your personal inbox can remain relatively clean. In the case of my search, I applied for developer and support engineer roles - If you will be applying for multiple roles, tailor your resume for each of them. Even within different development disciplines, write distinct resumes.

Writing a cover letter for a job won't hurt, although to save time I recommend writing two or three madlibs style cover letters and tailor them to each job. Eventually, you will perfect the formula and reduce to one madlibs style cover letter. If you're applying to one of your favorite companies, definely apply with a cover letter.

In the end, you will absolutely not hear back from every job you apply to, and that's ok - just keep applying.

Opportunity - Read about other people's experiences - with a huge grain of salt

My job search was pretty special, as it was the second job search I had ever done in my life. I knew nothing about what to possibly expect, and when times got rough, I felt alone. Reading through other people's experiences helped a lot, and helped me to celebrate other people's successes as well as learn from their failures. Reddit's r/cscareerquestions is a good place to start.

I mention to read them with a huge grain of salt (edit: Ginormous) because some posts come accross as very unrealistic. For example, there was a post detailing a candidate's success in securing a job within four months with no prior computer science knowledge. The catch was that they performed this feat by only completing coding challenges on Leetcode. If it appears to be something only a computer can do, then it's likely exaggerated.

Another catch - people tend to overshare their failure online. This is not such a bad thing, as you can identify if you are in a similar situation as others. However, read a max of two negative stories per day. Reading too many negative stories will lead to diminishing returns and potentially distort your view of success in the search, since there is a lot of unwritten success.

Opportunity - Ask questions and be curious

Ask questions? Aren't I supposed to be telling you better advice than this? Bear with me. When you're entry level, you have a right to ask questions, even if you think they are incredibly silly. In fact, it's expected for you to ask questions. Someone with little to no experience in the field is not an expert, and deceiving yourself by not asking questions closes doors.

Come across some iffy stream syntax in Java? Search Stack Overflow and bookmark that answer so when you come back to it, you can the concept better and you get good at it. Get stuck on a company's coding challenge? Seek out how others completed questions with similar concepts and learn from their ways. Have a discussion.

What I'm trying to highlight with these two examples is a. as a developer, becoming a better seeker of knowledge will help you. It's a vital career skill. b. more pertinent to the topic of managing rejections, asking questions and being humble about your rejection creates a connection with other applicants. It's the perfect conversation starter when you and another person both wrote code that timed out on a company's coding challenge.

Signing off

I hope these three pieces of advice help you to see your job search from a different lens. I like to think of a job search like running in the rain without an umbrella. You will make it home, but if you just waste your energy complaining about the rain, you'll get soaked in the process. Let the rain refresh you and use it to your advantage.

Until the next time.

All the posts in this series

Part 1

Part 3

Runner Image credit to Great Run. No rights reserved.

How I managed to keep my sanity in my job hunt - Part one

Luis Zugasti — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:53:45 +0000

This is part one of a three post series

Getting a job in software development can be anything but a walk in the park. There are so many things to learn and be open to, and equally as many pitfalls to dwell into. Throughout my search, I reached many new highs, as well as quite a few lows. I'm writing this post as a starting point in your job hunt, as well as a reminder of the things you need to keep in mind when looking for a job. Not everyone is in the same situation as I once was so do take some of this advice with a grain of salt - however, whatever advice you do keep, I hope it is of help.

I've structured this post as a series of Pitfalls and Opportunities (Fancy terms I'll use for Do's and Dont's) - if there's anything you want to add, any resources, anything - feel free to comment!

Opportunity - Get a Squad

Taking on a job hunt is far easier (and more fun) if you do it with friends that are in a similar area as you. In my case, I have three good friends which all graduated from the same university in the same major - all looking for work.

We were able to ask questions to each other in a group chat, notify each other of an application open date, and share links to recruiting events. When times were tough, I really relied on this small group of friends to vent to, and we even held group calls. Having a small squad of people whom are in a similar situation as you not only helps you realize that you are not alone, but also that their successes can be and definitely are yours too.

Pitfall - Give in to the grind

This one's going to be controversial. In today's competitive entry-level market, the OA (Online Assessment) has become an unpopular pillar in companies' interview processes. No matter what your opinion is on it, you must take some time to get prepared for it, whether by using services such as Leetcode, CodeSignal, or a competitive coding site like Kattis.

The main problem with OAs is that they tend to be relentlessly challenging. Potential employers expect you to hop on a one hour session and solve novel problems of high difficulty. To increase your chances of success you must practice, unless you're a crack coder (please teach me your ways if you are).

It takes time and practice to get the hang of the key underlying principles of challenges. You have to build up a habit, and like many habits, it can be very easy to give up. However, it can also be very easy to completely immerse yourself into practicing coding challenges, which is not healthy, nor fulfilling.

I avoided the grind by gradually ramping myself up - the first month of my job search, I'd commit to solving one problem a day of any difficulty within one hour. I'd use it as an exploratory exercise - if I didn't solve it, I'd spend the following hour or so reading the solution and committing to learn something new. This built up and by the third month, I could solve two novel problems within an hour. However this is not a one size fits all problem, and there's a great list of guides for practicing found on Leetcode itself after you create an account.

Outside of Leetcode, I filled up my time taking MOOCs from edX/Coursera and reading books on topics I liked. This leads into my next point:

Opportunity: Learn at your own pace

I completed my job hunt after graduating, and I didn't have any classes contending for my time. So, I had an opportunity to veer out to learn concepts that intrigued me and hopefully challenged me. Although I was in a rush to get a position, I still had to keep my knowledge sharp as a generalist, and generalize I did. I enrolled in an Algorithms course, Machine Learning course, some courses for Devops and cloud infrastructure, and even an Android course (I didn't finish the Android one - I realized I am more interested in WebDev/Machine Learning!)

Many of these courses consisted of high quality video lectures and assignments that felt like coding towards a Leetcode problem - however, with solid grading criteria, I learned to write better code, in my own personal coding environment. I learned different ways to wrap my head around a problem, which, when done at your own pace is really fulfilling. Try out different courses - many of these providers offer them at no cost to you to access lectures and assignments, which is truly zero risk other than your time.

The point being here - enjoy this opportunity that you have to learn, and try to challenge yourself in a non-grind manner.

Signing off

I hope I was able to inspire you with some of the most important considerations in my job search. If you're interested, I accepted a position in the United States at Epic Systems - and I'm hyped to start there in the late Spring of 2021!

In my next post, I'll cover subtle reminders about the effects that luck has in your job search, the importance of networking (And a few sub-tips related to that), and avoiding something I like to call job hunter burnout. Till the next time, fellow developer!

All the posts in this series

Part 2

Part 3