An Engineering Leader’s

Job Search Algorithm

by Kevin Conroy Comments welcomed!

See also:
● An Engineering Leader’s System Design Interview Template
● ⭐ An Engineering Leader’s Behavioral Interview Template

Overview
This outlines the algorithm I’ve used for my job searches. It’s not perfect. There’s no one
right way to do this, and your mileage will vary. However, I’ve tried to capture the common
elements and rules of thumb I’ve picked up over the years in the hopes that it will help
someone else through what is all too often a very stressful process. I hope you, too, can
overcome the imposter syndrome and anxiety you might have to get a job that you love
and pays you what you are worth (or more)!

My experience reflects looking for an engineering leadership role took ~3 months in late
2021/early 2022. This seems to mirror other recent experiences folks have shared. If you’re
looking for an IC role, you’ll probably be able to finish faster and have 10x more jobs to
choose from in the first place.

If you do nothing else:

1. Use employee referrals to get your application noticed
2. Participate in practice interviews to level up your interviewing skills
3. Always negotiate!
4. Remember: Your new team is excited to have you; they just don’t know it yet.

Update: Layoffs and Freezes (Nov 2022-June 2023)

Many companies have a hiring freeze, and we’re seeing increasingly big layoffs. Job
availability may be lower, and there may be a larger pool of candidates looking. Follow the
steps in this guide to make yourself stand out.
Note: During recessionary periods, the folks laid off from Tier 1 tech companies will take a
role at a Tier 2 company, driving Tier 2 candidates down to Tier 3, and making it very hard
for recent grads and limited-experience workers to find a role. This is now the third big
recessionary period for Silicon Valley, and every single time the market comes back
stronger than before. Save up your emergency funds, learn new skills, and push yourself to
be in the top 25% of performance reviews. You’ll come out stronger!

tl:dr; The Algorithm

function jobSearch(Candidate you) {
// pre-work
Goals goals = you.calculateTenYearGoals();
Compensation minimumBar = marketDataService.refresh();
List<Company> targetCompanies = searchTargetCompanies(goals, you.coreValues());

// self marketing and application prep

Resume resume = new Resume(you);
linkedIn.update(you, resume);
Website site = new Website(you, resume, linkedIn); // optional

// applications
List<Jobs> targetJobs = whoIsHiring(targetCompanies, goals, minimumBar);
targetJobs.addAll(linkedIn.getJobs()).addAll(hackerNews.getJobs()).addAll(...);
foreach(job in targetJobs) {
if (linkedIn.hasConnection(job)) {
applyWithEmployeeReferral(job, resume, site, new CoverLetter(job));
} else {
applyCold(job, resume, site, new CoverLetter(job));
}
}

// interviews
List<Interviews> interviews = Recruiters.schedule();
foreach(interview in interviews) {
applyBehavioralTemplate(interview);
applySystemDesignTemplate(interview);
if (you.leetcode()) { applyLeetcodeTemplate(interview); } // optional
}

// offers
List<Offer> offers = Recruiters.loveYou();
Offer dreamJob = filterOffers(offers);
 you.negotiate(dreamJob, minimumBar, goals);

// winning
you.setJob(dreamJob);
}

Pre-Work

Know Your Five-Year/Ten-Year Goals

Before starting my job search, I wrote down my five- to ten-year goals. I then worked
backward and set a 3-year goal to support that, then what I’d need to do in the next four
quarters to do that. Yes, this literally was a personal set of KPIs and OKRs with a Five/Ten
Year Vision. It included both personal and professional goals for myself and my family.

When paired with my core values, this helped me figure out what I wanted in the next steps
of my career. Not just in terms of comp and impact, but in terms of nextJob, nextJob+1, and
nextJob+2. Framed this way, your goal may not be just to find a new gig, but rather to take
the first step in a series of intentional steps toward a bigger goal. Of course, just finding
your next role and escaping a toxic environment is totally acceptable, too!

If you’re struggling to figure out your goals on your own, consider talking with a mentor or
coach. They can help you immensely in figuring out what your goals are.

Read more: Michael Girdley on Twitter: "Early in my career, I didn't make long-term plans. I
regret that. I worked hard and was busy. But I didn't seem to get any closer to the big
things I wanted to do. Fast forward... This is the simple system I use now to set big goals --
and stay on track for years. (1/x)"

Review Market Data

I’ve found that it’s very helpful to start any job search by understanding what the current
market compensation levels are for different roles and levels and to get a sense of what
companies are paying today. This data helped me to know what tier I wanted to target and
when pay bands were well below market and not worth the effort.

In a remote-friendly, post-COVID work world, three tiers of tech pay have emerged. Gergely
Orosz calls this the Trimodal Nature of Software Engineering, and although his article
focuses on the EU, it is repeated across the US and the world.
For the US market: check out https://www.levels.fyi/. If you are a member of their
community, you’ll also be able to access the live leaderboard. Remember: filter offers
within a target company to “New Offers Only” otherwise you’ll see internal promotions,
which refreshers and stock appreciation can impact. “New Offers Only” gives a much more
realistic view of what you can expect coming in. (Of course, if you already work at the target
company, then look at everything!).

For the EU market, check out https://techpays.com/

Additionally, the Rands Leadership Slack community has set up two documents in the
#compensation channel which helped me immensely:
● High Paying Tech Companies
● Tech companies that pay a lot for Staff (and EM)

There’s usually a stream of articles on Hacker News about the current state of
compensation: What is your labor worth? Tech compensation in 2021 - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Of course, money should not be the only motivator for you in a job search. Work-life
balance, benefits, purpose, impact, technology stack, and many other factors can also be
important. Resources like Glassdoor and Blind can be somewhat helpful for doing research
here as long as you remember that often the happiest employees aren’t posting.

List Your Target Companies

Come up with a list of companies you want to focus on for your job search efforts. These
could be companies that you found in your market data research. It could be a company
doing something really cool that you’re interested in. It may be an organization that’s
making a positive impact in the world. Perhaps you know someone who works there. As
long as there’s something that you find interesting or personally compelling, add them to
the list.

Make it a long list. You can edit it later. Grab a link to the job/career page so that you can
easily search it again later for open positions.

Spend several days (or more) doing this if you can. This list benefits from time and a chance
to explore a range of companies you might want to work at, even if they aren’t hiring for
your target role right now.

Pro tip: Keep this list going after you have your new role. I call this my “In Case of
Emergency Job Search List.” As you come across cool products, teams, and
companies, just drop a link in the doc or spreadsheet, perhaps with a note about
why you were interested.

You may also want to have an “anti-target” list. This may be a specific set of companies
you don’t want to work at, or (more likely) it’s a set of attributes or industries that you won’t
consider. For example, I was not personally interested in anything related to crypto or
defense. There’s no universal right or wrong answer here other than to know what your
personal preferences are for what will make you unhappy. Writing them down will help you
stay true to yourself.

Self-Marketing and Application Prep

Like it or not, your resume and cover letter are really just marketing devices that are meant
to get you a phone screen. Once you realize that, you can leverage other marketing tactics
to help you improve your odds.

Resume / CV
In an ideal world, you’ll keep a long-form copy of your resume (outside of the US, folks call
this a curriculum vitae or CV). This long version can take as many pages as you want. It
should list EVERYTHING you’ve done and have lots of bullet points. Ideally, you’ll update this
every six months to a year, and at a minimum update it right after your annual
performance review with your accomplishments and feedback.

When you’re ready to job search, you can clone your CV and then edit it down into a
resume. This is easier said than done. It took me a few weeks and working with a tech
recruiter to get mine into a shape I was happy with. If you are in the Rands community,
check out the #vet-my-resume channel.

Tools and Templates

While you want a general “one size fits all” copy of your resume as a base, to really stand
out, you’ll want to be able to quickly and easily produce customized copies of your resume
for each job application. As such, you should favor the ability to edit content quickly in a
WYSIWYG format. I recommend skipping one of the custom LaTeX or code-generating
resumes and focusing on a decent Google Docs or Word template.

Pro Tip: Spend $5 to $10 on Etsy to purchase a custom template that’s ready for you to
customize with content: https://www.etsy.com/search?q=resume%20template

Pro Tip: Use a custom Google Font to make your resume stand out. (I’m partial to Open
Sans and Aleo, but also use the fonts from the template you purchased.)
Communicating Impact
For each job on your resume, you’ll want one or more bullet points that outline what action
you took, what you achieved, the impact it had, and perhaps the tech that was used. The
generic format is:

● {action verb} {deliverable/achievement} {impact (quantifiable if

possible}} {tech used (if applicable)}

Here are some examples of that format:

● Managed six remote and hybrid teams and team-of-teams for engineering,
product, and design of 24 staff with low turnover.

● Found product-market fit for the marketplace and SaaS products,

overseeing business lines, product, tech roadmap, resulting in growth
from $2M to $600M from 1.3M donors, with sustained 35% YOY growth.

● Recruited, led, and grew a team of engineers, product managers, and

designers in a remote-first culture across four time zones with a focus
on diversity, inclusion, psychological safety, and best practices,
leading to high retention and the Washington Post’s 2020 Best Workplace
award.

Far too often engineers focus on the technology that they use, the number of lines of code
written, and other tactical details. Great resumes focus on the impact that the person had
and highlight the business metrics that they helped move (e.g. added an additional
$XXXK to revenue, acquired YYYY more users, reduced load time by ZZ%, increased
conversion rates by +AA%, etc.)

Resume Resources
You can find a lot of great resources here:
● The Tech Resume Inside Out
● Software Engineer Resume Examples & Templates (PDF Downloads)
● 185 Action Verbs That'll Make Your Resume Shine | The Muse

It’s worth getting feedback on your resume and considering hiring someone to help you:
● Rands Leadership Slack #vet-my-resume
● Angie Callen: Resume Writing - Career Benders, Inc.
Writer's block? Non-native speaker? You can also send your resume to ChatGPT with a
prompt for it to make it “sound more professional” or “like a great resume.” Make sure that
you review the output, though!

Rule of thumb: For a US-centric audience, your resume should be 1 page if you have less
than 5 years of experience, and should be at most 2 pages if you have more than 10 years
of experience. Even the most senior executives with 30 years of experience can get down to
a 2-page resume, and you can too!

Examples
If helpful, here’s where my resume landed this last round. I made two versions - one that I
used when targeting executive (CTO/VP) level roles and one for director and manager level
positions. They each highlighted something different and allowed me to customize the
content for each position. They are not perfect, and feedback is welcome.

● Executive Version: https://kevinmconroy.com/hello/KevinConroyResume.pdf

● Director/EM Version: https:/kevinmconroy.com/hello/KevinConroyEMResume.pdf

LinkedIn
Once you’ve written your resume, now it’s time to update your LinkedIn profile. You’ll find
that many employers and recruiters default to LinkedIn, so it’s worth spending an
afternoon or evening sprucing up.

Make sure that you’ve added bullets to each job, have everything linked properly, and
solicit a few recommendations from co-workers if you don’t have many on your profile
already.

There are services that can help you do this if you want: LinkedIn Profile Services - Briefcase
Coach

One thing that you can do is browse LinkedIn and look at the profiles that impress you
among your peers. Take note of what they do that your profile doesn’t have and mimic
accordingly.

Pro Tip: I found it helpful to pay for the Premium version of LinkedIn while job
searching so that I could see who viewed my profile. This was helpful to know when
 hiring managers would view my LinkedIn as you won’t get a signal from their
application tracking system (ATS) that they are looking at you.

Example: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmconroy/

Cover Letters
I hate writing cover letters almost as much as I hate reading poorly written cover letters. It’s
hard to put together a great cover letter, particularly for a job you only learned about five
minutes ago.

The good news is that most tech jobs don’t require a cover letter.

The bad news is that if you are doing a cold application without an employee referral, you
should consider writing a cover letter.

Why? Most big employers have “reduced the friction” to apply to jobs, which means they
are getting hundreds or thousands of candidates applying to work at their company. Unless
it seems that the job description was custom written to match your experience, you really
need to do something to help your application stand out in a list of hundreds.

Put another way, your lack of a cover letter is my opportunity to stand out by doing
something even better: (a) a job search microsite and (b) an employee referral.

Job Search Microsite

I think that there’s an opportunity to exceed expectations and reframe the idea of a cover
letter into a new format for the digital age. Specifically: a job search microsite.

In the spirit of “show, don’t tell,” here’s an example: https://www.kevinmconroy.com/hello/

The purpose of this site is to break out of the confines of a resume and cover letter and get
a full browser window to yourself to show off why you’re a great hire. It lets you control the
format, images, links, presentation, and tone. It also can let you show off your UX and
design skills (if that’s something you want to show off).

While I did a custom design for mine, you don’t have to do this. You can buy a template on
your favorite CMS. The recruiter and hiring manager likely won’t know the difference
between custom code and a template unless you’re using a default template from
WordPress that’s easy to spot. (This is the same reason you don’t use a built-in resume
template from Word - it’s too common and you won’t stand out.)

The key aspect of a microsite is NOT the design but rather the content. As such, I started
my microsite in a Google Doc with headers and bullet points. I iterated on the content for a
week until I had it down to the key messages and groups that I wanted to communicate. I
pulled these from my resume and referred to several target job postings to see what kinds
of skills and qualities the recruiter/hiring manager might be looking for. Content is key!

To be clear, this is not standard practice, and I anticipate most people will not do this.
However, that’s exactly why I spent two weeks putting this site together. It’s a marketing
device that helped me stand out. I was able to add the link to my profiles and drop it in my
email signature. It also was my “portfolio” site on job applications and on my resume. I
know from verbal feedback that it resulted in two additional job interviews (and ultimately
offers) and helped folks form a good impression of me before my interviews.

Pro Tip: If you’re a perfectionist, time box yourself to two weeks to create this site.
Find a designer friend to help, or hire someone from Fiverr.

Key Elements for Job Search Microsite

● Have a professional profile picture
● Get a clear headline of what you are looking for
● Have a clear link to both your resume and LinkedIn
● Tell a story about your strengths and leadership philosophy
● Highlight the elements that matter most to you and that potential employers will
value (your unique value proposition)
● Pull in recommendations from LinkedIn
● Showcase multimedia (talks, demos, screenshots, etc.) that would be buried in a
resume or LinkedIn

Marketing Materials
Resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn, and microsites are all marketing materials. Even this
document that you’re reading is a form of marketing material. (After all, I’ll bet that you just
read either my resume, LinkedIn, and/or microsite.) Of course, the purpose of this
document is not to market myself, but hopefully, you can see how even things like this doc
could be used to build up one’s personal brand image. Personal blogs also serve this role.
Be true to yourself and think outside of the usual boxes. Perhaps there’s something unique
you can do other than a microsite that will make your application - and candidacy - rise to
the top of the stack.

Talent Networks
If you are already in big tech or a sought-after name-brand company, you may have
success joining a talent network. These are private networks of job candidates who often
have to apply to join. Companies then pay the network administrator for access to the
talent, which means it’s free for you and there’s often a high bar. There are limited data
points available on how successful this is, but in the interest of casting a wide net, the
worst-case scenario is getting additional cold outreach that you can ignore.

● https://pragmatic-engineer.pallet.com/talent/welcome
● https://www.aboveboard.com/
● https://motionrecruitment.com/candidates
● https://techjobsforgood.com/

Job Applications
Now that you have your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn, and optional microsite done, you’re
ready to start applying in earnest. (Yes, job searching seems like a full-time job!)

Search Jobs
There are hundreds of places you can search for jobs. Here are the ones that I’ve found to
have high-quality results:

● LinkedIn - set up job alerts for the roles you want (e.g. engineering manager)
○ Set up multiple searches and job alerts for different roles
○ I recommend daily notifications if you are actively looking
● https://techjobsforgood.com/
● Target company job boards
● Hacker News “Who is hiring?” - https://hnhiring.com/
● https://www.workatastartup.com/ - YC’s job board for startups
 ● Various Slacks
○ Rands Leadership Slack #jobs and #remote-jobs: https://rands-
leadership.slack.com/archives/C0J2L41FT
○ Eng Manager Slack #jobs:
(Join the slack at https://engmanagers.github.io/)
○ DC Tech Slack #jobs
(Join the slack at https://dctech.chat/)
● https://pragmatic-engineer.pallet.com/talent/welcome

Additional Job Boards

● https://www.diversifytech.com/job-board
● https://womenpm.careerwebsite.com/
● https://www.themuse.com/
● https://otta.com/
● https://www.builtinnyc.com/
● https://wellfound.com/
● https://lennys-jobs.pallet.com/jobs
● https://jobs.mindtheproduct.com/
● https://www.trueup.io/
● https://jobs.fifthwall.vc/jobs
● https://www.topstartups.io/

I’m also maintaining a list of job boards for 🌎 Finding Jobs in the Climate or Nonprofit
Sector, which are areas I’ve devoted my career to. (Note: Financial compensation can be
lower in these sectors, but the purpose-driven work is rejuvenating!)

If you specifically want to avoid leetcode/whiteboard-style interviews, then this resource

may be helpful: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards. It’s worth
mentioning, though, that the specific content in your full loop will vary within a company
based on the level of your role. There are plenty of companies where they might ask an IC
to do a coding round but will not ask a Manager level (or higher) to do so. I’d recommend
coming up with your list of target companies based on how excited you are for the
company, product, and perhaps team first and not filtering based on their interview
process initially. You can always remove companies from your consideration if they start
sending up red flags to you during the process.
Layoffs
In 2022 and 2023, a large number of companies had reductions in their headcount or a
hiring freeze. You may want to track which companies have recently done this here:
https://layoffs.fyi/

As a reminder, almost every long-lasting company will have to conduct layoffs at some
point, pause hiring, and then begin to grow again. Just because a company has had layoffs
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work there, but you should figure out what has changed since
the layoff and why they are now ready to hire. Understanding the rationale will help you
frame your application, answers, and questions to the team.

Filter Jobs
In my most recent search, I probably read more than 500 job listings, but only elected to
apply to ~50 of them. This filtering was aided by only considering roles that aligned with the
goals that I set out at the start.

Applying
If you found a job that you are excited about and have at least 50% of the qualifications for,
you should apply! There are two ways to go about this.

Employee Referral
The single best way to get to a phone screen is to apply using an employee referral.
This is true in both big and small companies. Use LinkedIn to reach out to friends and old
co-workers that are now at your target company. Ask for introductions to 2nd order
connections. You can even approach people in Slack channels at your target company.
Employees often get a referral bonus for new hires. If you have your microsite ready, you
can send a link to your page and ask for a referral.

I found that more than 80% of the jobs that I applied to via an employee referral resulted in
a phone screen. Your mileage may vary.
2nd Degree Network
Your LinkedIn network is a tremendous asset for you to get an employee referral. You want
to look for people who are one or two degrees away from you. The first-degree outreach is
hopefully easy if you know the person, but the 2nd degree can be awkward. Here’s a
template with a 90% success rate:

"hi <linkedin contact>, hope you're doing well! I saw you know <person X>
at <company Y> - I was interested in <role> there, would you be up for
doing an intro?"

As one person notes, there’s also a great side effect: “I've also gotten a chance to reconnect
with a lot of folks that I haven't talked to in a while with this, which has been really fun :)”

Cold Application
A cold application is when you just apply using the company’s job site or LinkedIn job ad.
You’d think that this is the best way to apply, right? Well, many companies get hundreds of
applicants, so your odds of getting noticed here are lower. Again, cover letters and
customized resumes will help you here.

If it’s a big company, consider customizing your resume to stuff it with keywords from the
job description. It’s a stupid thing to have to do, but you have to get past automated
application screening algorithms in order to get the phone interview. Again, employee
referrals are a much better route to go.

Interviews
Each company has its own process, but the common pattern seems to be:
1. Phone screen with a recruiter
2. Technical and/or behavioral screen with the hiring manager (or proxy)
3. Full Interview Loop
a. Behavior Interviews (2-5)
b. Coding Interview (0-2)
c. System Design (0-2)
d. Leadership / Project Retrospective (0-1)
e. Sometimes: Follow up discussion with the hiring manager
4. Job Offer (or Rejection)
Phone Interview
In my experience, you’ll want to prepare to answer a few questions:

● Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re looking for next?
● What is motivating your job search now?
● What are you looking for in your next role?
● When do you need to make a decision? Where are you in your search?

In addition, if you prepare for the standard behavioral interview questions, you’ll be ready
for the other questions that are often asked at this stage.

Behavioral Interviews
In terms of ROI, you’ll get the most leverage in your prep by focusing on your behavioral
interview prep. The behavioral interview rounds almost always outnumber the
coding+design rounds in terms of quantity. In addition, the quality of your answers in the
behavioral rounds will often determine not only what level you qualify for (e.g. Director or
Senior Director), but also if you are the 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice candidate.

If you are applying for an engineering leadership position, I recommend using a modified
version of the popular STAR format which I call STAR-F or F-STAR. The added F stands for
the “Framework” that you use to solve the general situation. You’ll help uplevel yourself by
showing that you have a framework that you can consistently apply based on your years of
experience.

This topic is covered in ⭐ An Engineering Leader’s Behavioral Interview Template.

System Design Interviews

The typical advice on system design is very engineer and architect-focused. While there’s
nothing wrong with that, I’m seeing a possible gap between the best-possible answer that a
senior/staff engineer could provide and what an engineering manager could provide. My
hypothesis is that a manager’s optimal answer will overlap with the senior/staff engineer's
answer, but will also bring in business, product, and strategic vision to the discussion.

This topic is covered in An Engineering Leader’s System Design Interview Template .

Coding Interviews
This is a divisive topic of discussion. Some people decide that they will not interview with
any company that has a coding screen. (More power to you!)

If you do find that you need to prepare for a coding interview, this may be helpful:
● Purchase a Premium Leetcode membership and filter the questions based on your
target company sorted by most frequent/recent first
● Additionally, focus on this list if you have limited time: New Year Gift - Curated List of
Top 75 LeetCode Questions to Save Your Time - Blind
● Read up on the common patterns that you’ll find: 14 Patterns to Ace Any Coding
Interview Question | HackerNoon
● Consider Grokking the Coding Interview if you have more time: Grokking the Coding
Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions - Learn Interactively
● LeetCode Patterns https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/

According to An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews - malisper.me, there’s a way

to solve almost all of these using a few common techniques:
1. After being given the algorithm problem, ask for the specific runtime your solution
will need to have. Almost certainly, the interviewer will tell you.
2. Filter out the data structures and algorithms that obviously aren’t relevant to the
problem at hand. This will eliminate most of the list and you will usually be left with
2-3 data structures and algorithms.
1. You can filter out data structures that are too slow. If you need to solve a
problem in O(1) time, it’s impossible to use a binary tree in the solution,
because a binary tree will always take at least O(log n) time.
2. You can filter out algorithms if they are impossible to use for the given
problem. If there isn’t a graph in the problem, you know that a depth-first
search can’t be relevant.
3. Go through the use cases for the remaining data structures and see which ones are
relevant to the problem at hand. The solution for the problem is going to be a
combination of these use cases. All you need to do is piece together these different
use cases and you’ll come up with the solution to the problem.
● Hash Tables
● Linked Lists
● Binary Trees
● Depth-first search
● Binary Search
 ● Sorting
● Recursion

Others have also found success with the REACTO format, which is Repeat Examples
Approaches Code Test (BIG-O): The REACTO! Pattern for Acing Technical Interviews
1. REPEAT the question. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve seen a recruit start
coding while completely misunderstanding what I’m asking of them. Repeating the
question also gives you the chance to gather your thoughts and get over the initial
butterflies in your stomach.
2. EXAMPLES Play out various examples on the board. For example, if you’re working
on a merge-sort algorithm, write out a list and then what the list would look like
after several levels of recursion.
3. APPROACHES Start talking about the approach you’re going to take: recursive,
iterative, heuristic? Giving the interviewer some insight into your logic and thought
process helps them track what direction you are going.
4. CODE Author Gayle Laakmann McDowell gave a talk at Fullstack recently and gave a
great tip for coding on the exam. She calls this “Breadth-First Coding”. The core idea
is to write out the steps of your solution first before diving into the details, then
implement the details. This is good development practice and you won’t get bogged
in minutia and run out of time. Some additional tips:
a. Leave yourself room between each line for later edits
b. Star things you’re not sure about
c. Pseudocode things that you know you can do but can’t figure out right now
5. TEST When you’re finished, Run an example line by line through your code. Use
space on the side to write down the current state of data. Go back and run your
examples and see if they work.
6. OPTIMIZATION AND RUNTIME O(n), O(n^2) - how would this perform for large data
sets? This is often something you would want to address as you discuss different
options and approaches you could take to solve the problem. Perhaps you went
with a brute force approach to get it done but have an idea for a better method.
There is lots of great advice for approximating big-O but the main thing to
remember is: what will be painful for my algorithm if one of these inputs got
significantly larger?
Rejections
If you apply to a large number of jobs, you’ll likely be facing a lot of rejections and a lot of
“ghosting”. I applied to ~50 jobs, got rejected from 12, ghosted by 19, had phone screens at
8, full loops at 6, and got 3 offers. Although I hope that you get 100% of the roles you want,
many applicants report similar patterns in their job funnel. I’ve found it helpful to go into
the process knowing that these stats are normal and reflect the process, not my worth. Still,
it doesn’t make the rejections sting any less.

Every time I got rejected, I searched and applied for two more jobs. Or studied an extra
system design video. Or read another chapter in one of my prep books. Or, wrote another
part of one of these documents. This coping mechanism is particularly helpful to keep
things moving and build up momentum, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Do self-care and
remember, you can do this! We’re rooting for you!

To help me through this, I wrote the following on an index card and taped it to my monitor:

Your new team is so excited for you to start… they just don’t know it yet.
Job Offers
After you finish your loops, hopefully, one or more of them will go to a job offer.

Remember, you should always negotiate your salary. Other people have written
extensively on this topic and I highly recommend you learn from their wisdom:

● Fearless Salary Negotiation

● Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued | Kalzumeus Software
● TLDR Stock Options
● https://amazon.com/Brilliant-Salary-Negotiation-Email-Samples-ebook/dp/
B077BQZJL4/

My advice here is to come up with your walk away target before you get your first offer
and then leverage competing offers to boost the offer for your top pick company.

If you are doubting your “worth” in terms of compensation, remember this: “A bottle of
water can be .50 cents at a supermarket, $2 at the gym, $3 at the movies, and $6 on a
plane. Same water. The only thing that changed its value was the place.” If you have an
offer from the right place, you’ll be a bottle of water on an airplane to them.

If you need help figuring out what you are worth, check out Rands Leadership Slack
#compensation.

Here’s a script that I used that got me a 20% increase on an offer from a public company.
Thanks to researching market trends, I knew the salary offered to me was near the max for
the company, so I elected to just focus on RSU and sign on. Your situation will likely be
different. Use the resources above to find correct and current advice for your situation, just
remember - always negotiate, especially if you identify as female or from an
underrepresented group in tech (this is how we’ll close the pay gap and keep it closed!)

I’m really excited about the $COMPANY offer, but I need to square the offer with some
competing concerns.

First, by leaving $CURRENT_JOB, I’ll be walking away from $___ in additional non-salary
compensation that I’d get in the next year.
 Second, I’ve received several offers, and expect to get several more. The top offer that I
have right now is from $OTHER_COMPANY, a publicly-traded company. They’ve offered
me a $___ salary, $___ RSU over four years, and an additional $___ sign-on bonus.

However, I’m most excited about the role at $COMPANY. I’d be happy to forgo the
(higher) $___ RSU and $___ sign-on incentive from $OTHER_COMPANY and the additional
$__ in comp from $CURRENT_JOB if $COMPANY is able to increase my four-year RSU
grant to $___ (editor’s note: 20% increase) and add a $____ sign-on (editor’s note: it was
$0 initially).

If we can get those numbers, I’ll also withdraw my candidacy from the other roles I’m in
process with (including $OTHER_BIG_COMPANY_1 and $OTHER_BIG_COMPANY_2) and will
sign with $COMPANY.

Good Luck!
The job search process is humbling. Imposter syndrome is real and I had wild swings
between feeling like “I can’t do this, no one will want to hire me” to “Wow, that went so
great, I’m sure to get this” and everything in between. It’s normal. Find ways to do self-care,
manage your stress, and find ways to laugh about things that aren’t going well. The #job-
search-journal channel in Rands Leadership Slack is a great place to vent and commiserate.
 Source: Tortoise and Dino

If I put this much thought into job searching, imagine what I can do to help your team!