Acing Tech Interviews In A Bad Job Market

Check out the full 4.5+ hour course diving even deeper into this session's concepts: [Course] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer

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Here are the core points from the session:

• Organize and track your job search - Every successful job search is split up into the 2 overall steps of "Get interviews" and "Pass interviews". It's crucial to figure out which step you're struggling with as the solutions for each phase are wildly different. If your conversion rate from application -> interview opportunity is less than 5%, that's a sign that you need to improve at the "Get interviews" step. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of how all your opportunities go, so you can construct a funnel and figure out which stage of the offer journey needs shoring up.
• Have the right mentality - Do not view interviews as a "make or break" opportunity, even if they are! When you put that much pressure on yourself during an interview, you become extremely high-strung and your performance tanks, particularly when you get a problem that you have never seen before (which is guaranteed to happen for any good tech company). Instead, go into every interview relaxed and view it as a fun learning opportunity where you get to hang out with very talented engineers. Having the wrong mentality is one of the most common reasons engineers fail FAANG interviews: Alex interviewed tons of candidates back at Meta where they had the skills and knowledge but they completely fell apart during the interview.
• Learn how to cold message - Too many engineers send generic cold messages to Big Tech recruiters, which is a complete waste of time. Cold messages really only work when you're doing it with a smaller company (<250 employees) and putting actual effort into the message. Spend 10-15 minutes actually trying out that company's product and show that you've done that homework in your cold message.

For more job searching resources:

• "How to get referrals?"
• "How to get interview calls?"
• "What are the best websites for applying for tech jobs?"
• "How to figure out why I'm not passing onsite interviews?"
• "I want to land a job in a big tech as a SWE - How to do it?"