My job search is still going, and here is an update. I am waiting for one of the applications to go through before officially starting my next stint.

The main factor for this second stint (June-October) was seasonality. July and August were very quiet, with almost no openings in the market. Things picked up on September and have stayed better since.

I made some progress on my recovery too, thanks to some help from my coach. Burnout is less present, I feel more available to whatever comes and more awareness of where my lines are.

I am still selective, though not as much as the first stint. I opened the door to lower salaries and working for charities, hoping to increase my chances or work on something more interesting and aligned with my values.

I have also aimed a bit more towards the platform/reliability/devops side, which I am finding a better match for my skills and interests at the moment.

Some stats

I applied to 24 roles.

  • 2 Initiated by recruiter, 22 by me.
  • I used the platform cord for most roles, mastodon for one of them, and some recruiters called/emailed too.
  • I opened a hackajob and contractorjobs accounts, neither being particularly useful so far.

Status:

  • 1 Is still open
  • 4 (17%) were ghosted
  • 7 (29%) rejected straightaway
  • 3 (12.5%) rejected by me.
  • 4 (17%) I got to the screening, then failed

For the remaining 5 (21%) I got somewhere:

  • In one of them I went through the first technical interview, mostly about my experience. I thought I did well but got rejected.
  • There was one in a programming language that I had no professional experience. I mentioned this on the screening and they told me to go ahead regardless so I did.
  • I did another one for a C++ role in which I have experience from many years ago. I thought I did well and I liked it but most likely another candidate with fresher experience got it.
  • There was a finance role in which the interview was quite difficult and required some luck to get the system design right from the start.
  • And the final one I went via recruiter and I thought I did quite well. Very aligned to my experience and strengths. I got to the final round with a few candidates, but someone else got it.

Compared to the first stint, I got less rejections before screening but more rejections after the first screening and by both sides.

I didn’t get stuck in any technical test but I still had trouble with system design tests as they seem really random. Companies that approached me had much harder interviews which is expected given the volume of candidates.

Next steps

Assuming I don’t get the last job, I believe that I will need to change and widen my strategy.

Contracting and freelancing seems like an obvious alternative so I am already playing with it. Joining some platform and start with small jobs to get the hang of it.

There is the consultancy path as well, but I haven’t seen that many open roles for established companies.

Startups are an option too, but it is difficult to find something that pays well enough to pay for the bills.

And finally persist on what I am doing already but bigger and better. The most successful applications, the ones where I did well and had some chances to get the job, were mostly on the sides of the algorithm. My experience points in the direction of leadership within a finance company, whereas my preference is a smaller team doing platform stuff, or writing and designing code for complicated systems.

A ballpark estimation is that companies are interviewing an average of 15 people in the last stage. Out of 38 applications, I got to final stage on 6 of them. So 6/38 chances to get to final stage.

Assuming there is a 1/15 chance to get the job from final stage, I would need 70 applications to get the binomial above 50%. Roughly double of what I have done so far. (1/15)*(6/38) gives a 0.01 probability of success, 1 in 100.

If I want to get a 95% confidence, I would need to apply to 300 jobs