I recently finished the first stint of job seeking efforts. I started gathering momentum on early may and applied for many jobs for a few weeks, but unfortunately nothing has worked so far and I decided not to continue while waiting for the results.

For context: London jobs, remote or hybrid, around my python/fintech experience, nothing bigger than 500 people.

My strategy has been using my current experience (mostly python, platform and infrastructure work) to get a job similar to previous roles, aiming for a slightly lower salary than what I had.

I have been quite selective and I have looked for things that were both similar enough and I found interesting for one reason or another.

Some stats

I applied to 14 roles.

  • 2 Initiated by recruiter, 12 by me.
  • I used the platform cord for around 8 roles, using regular web search or job board search for the rest

10 (71%) were rejected or ghosted straight away.

  • 7 (50%) rejected
  • 3 (21%) ghosted

The 4 (29%) left I got an answer. All of them I successfully got through the screening (I am human enough after all).

  • 1 (7%) I did not pass the assignment (rejected)
  • 1 (7%) I did not pass the technical interview. (ghosted).
  • 2 (14%) I got through the technical interview but I did not pass the “fit” interview. (rejected)

The different failures

ghosted or rejected before starting Pretty much anything non python, health or energy. If the experience is not relevant companies are not in the mood of figuring it out.

assignment: The main issue was that the interview prompted for 5 hours of work at most. This company relied heavily on LLMs for all parts of the process and from the feedback they expected more features. I don’t think I am that slow but maybe, although I suspect that it is about expecting LLM usage. They didn’t value the manual process or testing that much, so I think I need to either skip these or clarify if the time limit is with AI.

technical interview It was a very tough 2 hour interview sharing screen. The first part, a writing code test I got well enough to get it implemented. But the second part, a giant code review of a codebase that I didn’t have access to was very difficult. I do not know what they were seeking for, as I find unrealistic to get both the existing code and the changes at the same time. Perhaps communication or stress management?

company fit 1 I wasn’t particularly well prepared, nor I was feeling well during the interview, but I think they were looking for good leadership skills. My experience has been mostly of support and steering with loads of coding so I don’t think that’s where they were looking for

company fit 2 I was better prepared for this one, but even with that I failed on a similar set of questions, although this time hypothetical rather than personal experience. They were looking for someone with strong coding+product and leadership role, which again is not my direct experience (My leadership has been more subtle in general)

What did I learn and where do I go

I can confidently say that with the market so tight and that the software developer role is gone. Right now companies are looking for someone with very relevant experience for their stack, combined with some other skill. I saw these things as requirements on top of software skills:

  • devops/infrastructure
  • product/leadership
  • LLM workflows

Anything outside being an almost perfect match in stack is a non starter, and failing in the other requirements means not passing the other stages of the interview.

I also noticed that some of these companies keep the roles open and well advertised, which means that they have a strict process that they are happy to go through many candidates to find the “perfect fit”.

On the next steps: to widen the requirements and see what’s outside the “similar to before” jobs. If that doesn’t work I might try again with a more focused strategy.