Interviewing is a full time job

This post is a recap of my recent experience job searching and a “thank you” for all the help I received along the way.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, and if not, it’s a common sentiment to describe the amount of effort it takes to interview with multiple companies when job searching.

I recently underwent this process for the first time, and I 100% agree with the sentiment. Even though I have worked before, this is the first time I fully went “all in” on job searching. My process was three weeks straight of scheduling, interviewing, and following-up with 28 different companies.

Okay, I exaggerated a bit. I couldn’t have done this all myself, and the only reason I was able to cast such a wide net was because I had help from the Recurse Center career services. They made it really easy to get and schedule phone screens, get advice, and stay organized when interviewing.

I think what really helped was their initial contact. Before ever talking with a company, the career services would reach out to see if said company was interested in a phone screen, with zero effort on my part. That’s huge and a lot of work just to get a foothold! I have certainly put a lot of effort in the past for a “cold” application to never make it to a call. Of the 28 companies I was interested in, 16 of them declined without a phone screen. Again, zero effort on my part which helped me retain my enthusiasm for interviewing.

Interviewing with the remaining 12, it was my responsibility to schedule and maintain contact to move the process along. That’s definitely a full time job. Fortunately fewer and fewer companies make it through the funnel as the interviews progress. I think what helped me the most in this stage was knowing what was important to me: culture, opportunities to learn and be creative, and being in the security industry. Well, it’s important to know that in the phone screens too, but I kept it in mind as I got to learn more about each company.

I won’t say how many offers I received, but it was non-zero and at that point I don’t think I could have chosen wrong given my criteria (assuming, of course, I had more than one offer to choose from).

So thank you Recurse Center for helping me get a job! I couldn’t have done it to such a large scale without your support and guidance, not to mention the entire RC community who collectively helped me become a better programmer!