23 Rejections, Multiple Offers: What I Learned From My 2-Month SWE Job Search

#career #softwaredevelopment #programming #learning

Feels like it's been more than a minute since my last post. A lot has happened in my life over the past weeks: I searched for a job, travelled to Portugal, got married and started a new job!

Now that I am settling back into a routine, I am eager to start writing again. I have a long list of topics that I want to explore further and share with you all.

A first resource I want to share is a collection of all my thoughts, observations and advice from my recent job search, which lasted just under 2 months and resulted in multiple offers.

I break this collection down into several sections:

Mindset
Immediate Actions
Further Actions
Tips
Observations and Trends
Discussion

This is the guide I wish I had when I started.

Before we dive in, here is my job search by the numbers:

Duration: ~7 weeks
Applications sent: 72
Rejections: 23
Offers: 2

Disclaimer: I was applying primarily for Senior Software Engineer positions. I had several years of professional engineering experience going into the search, so these numbers shouldn't necessarily be treated as representative of someone looking for their first engineering role. Your results will vary depending on experience, location and the types of roles you're targeting. But I have included advice that should be applicable to anyone on the job hunt, regardless of experience.

Mindset

Entering your job search with the right mindset is foundational and key to success.

Consistent and steady wins the race. Job searching is a marathon. Manage your energy well. Keep your momentum up with a few small daily wins. Send out a few applications every day. Even 2 focused hours a day can be enough.
Gamify the job hunt experience: make it a daily challenge to send out at least a couple of applications then learn something new for potential roles, take this as an opportunity to learn more about companies and learn from interviewers.
Rejection does not mean failure. It's part of the numbers game. You will most likely go through multiple rejections before getting a job offer. I did. 23 times to be exact! Always ask for feedback if rejected, you can learn and improve the next time thanks to feedback. Each rejection is a chance to improve and increase your odds of succeeding in your next interview.
If you fail an interview, don't panic, it's not a nice feeling but as long as you take away a lesson to improve on for next time, that is called progress. Also over time you will get used to interviewing and it will feel more natural, and with repetition you will force luck and get that job. Don't linger on your failure, take away your learnings and shift your focus towards your next interview and opportunity.
Prioritise yourself. Job searching takes a toll, mentally and sometimes physically. It is hard to deal with rejection. Take time in the day for yourself. Start your day with sunlight, mindfulness and movement, spend your evening doing an activity you enjoy.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. In other words, don't rely heavily on one single interview process. Always be working on backup processes. Your interview pipeline should always be growing until you secure that offer.
Think out of the box. Build a portfolio of personal projects to stand out and give you more talking points during interviews.
Stay accountable. Tell your family and friends that you are applying for jobs and update them regularly on both your successes and failures.

Immediate actions

Complete these actions within your first week so that your results can start compounding fast and early on.

Spend a full day updating your CV/resume and making sure it contains all the relevant experience and keywords. A solid resume is foundational. Make sure your resume passes ATS screening.
Update your LinkedIn. Include keywords in profile title and description. Set status to open to work. Post regularly.
I personally like the new 'Featured' section where you can showcase your latest accomplishments such as highlighting personal projects and activities

Leverage your own close network of family/friends. You might be surprised by the amount of referrals just under your nose that might be working at a company you could apply for.
Prepare a cover letter template and include one section you can personalise using AI to speed up the process. I copy and paste the job description into an LLM and combine it with my resume as context. The LLM outputs a section tailored towards the company you are applying for that you can paste within the more generic template used.
Create a job application tracker to stay organised and follow up on status when necessary. I set up a spreadsheet with the following columns: company, status (null | applied | interview | offer | declined), actions, date, rejection reason
Join talent pools, job portals & recruiter networks to get inbound job opportunities over time. They might not be as relevant on average as outbound reach but it allows you to keep practicing interviewing. I actually got one of my offers through a recruiter network, so this channel certainly paid off for me.

Further actions

These actions are optional and take more time but can definitely pay off big time.

Connect with recruiters directly on LinkedIn and ask for opportunities
Go to networking events and ask people if they are actively hiring.
Set up coffee chats with leads, this makes the connection more personal than calls and you can get more valuable information from these meetings.

Interview preparation

Once you start getting leads and first round interviews, practice your technical and behavioral interviews.

Technical interviews

Prepare for coding and system design interviews - no need to memorize hundreds of problems, focus on the common data structures and algorithms and have a few system design templates ready. I created my own free tool for this purpose, no signup required.

Create flashcards to learn technical terms

For technical challenges, here are 2 useful open-source GitHub repos for practicing both System Design and Data Structures and Algorithms I found super helpful.

Behavioral interviews

Do high-level research on the company and read the job description before the interview - skills company is looking for, identify keywords to use in interview, mission statement, engineering principles, key features, latest news. AI is great for this use case. I have used it to research jobs and dig deeper into job descriptions.
Use the STAR methodology for behavioral interviews - prepare 6-8 answers to common questions.
Have a project deep-dive story prepared - story, features, tech stack, tradeoffs, lessons learned.
Always have a couple of questions handy to ask the interviewer if they ask if you have any questions at the end.

Tips

Here is some personal advice that helped me a lot.

Schedule your top choice company interviews slightly after your lower preference companies so you can practice beforehand with lower-ranked companies.
If targeting a certain industry, become more knowledgeable about said industry. This will give you an edge vs other engineers who often would only know technical aspects, not sector-wide trends and dynamics. For example, I did this with FinTech and got a bunch of books from my local library to read up on indsutry specific concepts.
Interviewing is a skill. Keep your interview skills fresh even when you're employed. It's good practice to keep interviewing occasionally and assess what your market value is. Also to maintain a fresh network of recruiters and protect yourself in a volatile job market.
Track metrics to know if you are on the right path. Treat your job search like a funnel:

Applications -> Responses -> Recruiter screens -> Technical rounds -> Final rounds -> Offers

Identify where your funnel breaks:

Few responses, consider tweaking your resume.
Screens but few technical rounds? Rework your positioning and storytelling.
Failing at technical rounds? Practice more.

Don't be afraid to follow up after an interview if no answer after a week or so. Only follow up a few times. If there's still no answer, you have probably been ghosted. Don't take it personally, it has happened to me countless times. The company may simply have shifted priorities.

Observations and Trends

Searching for a job this time felt very different compared to just a few years ago.

AI screening is becoming more common. I encountered several AI-led interview processes throughout my search. Some felt opaque about how the recording or data would be used and rarely led to any human follow-up. I would strongly recommend researching the company and understanding what you're consenting to before completing these types of interviews.
Authenticity is more important than ever. Many recruiters have told me that there is much slop out there with candidates overrelying on AI tools to pass interview rounds leading to inauthentic responses.
Interview strategies are all over the place. With the widespread adoption of AI tooling, some companies have shifted away from traditional LeetCode to more project-based evaluation. I felt that you never knew what to expect for each hiring process. I went through it all from LeetCode, to AI-assisted project building and discussions. This is arguably a good and bad thing as it gives opportunities to ace an interview in different ways but it also leads to confusion at times and a lot of context switching.