Linkedisney

Intro

These are some annotations I have been making recently regarding getting a job in this economy. Most of the info here comes from random youtubers and blog articles I have been consuming.

So, nothing of what is being said here should be taken as facts at all. It is all rocket science, experimentation, intuition etc.

I do not like LinkedIn at all, the amount of corporate bullshit that goes on there makes me dead sick. Even though it sucks ass, it probably still is the cheapest and most effective way to get recruiter attention.

But if you are mid to senior, and you use it properly, then you are in jobs heaven.

Also, english is not my first language.

Rant

Networking, reach, and friends are the most important things that assist you getting a job (always has been, you just got lied to).

It doesn’t matter if you are the CEO of the latest javascript framework, if nobody knows you, and you know nobody, then you won’t get a job.

If I were to rank skills a developer should have to be a sucessfull person in real life, I would put soft-skills and networking way above any hard-skills.

Hard skills can be learned in few weeks or months. Building healthy relationships take years.

This is where the facebook of jobs social media site called LinkeDisney LinkedIn comes in. The corporate flavored facebook, the place that devalues real developers and real work, and instead values influencers low-value pseudo-developers, by rewarding them to produce garbage valueless gibberish social-media-level content.

And that is not even close to an exageration… It is a known fact in “LinkedIn hack communities” that technical posts do not generate views… you literally have to produce click-bait social-media-level gibberish content to get attention there, that is how you get rewarded.

And we are about to become one. You want a job right? then you can’t ecape this, sorry bro.

But anyways - we can’t escape it just like we can’t escape the big ass black hole at the center of the galaxy.

Going Technical

First things first

Depending on where you live or when you created your LinkedIn account, you might have some of it set to private in the settings.

You should spend some time looking those knobs and settings, make sure everything is set to public for maximum visibility, and enable the recruiter alerts feature.

Searching for jobs

1. You can do boolean search filters
   • “keyword” AND ("keyword" OR “keyword”) AND NOT “keyword”
   • they limit the amount of filters
2. Make sure to search on the Posts section too, companies don’t always make job postings in the Jobs section
3. I little bird told me that 80% of the job openings are in the hands of recruiters these days, and not in the jobs board

The secret SSI page

Make sure you are logged in and go to linkedin.com/sales/ssi.

The higher your social selling index is, the less likely you are to be found by a recruiter.

You can decrease you ssi by creating more content juice for the heartless crawler bots that rank us.

Your profile is almost everything

1. LinkedIn search algo indexes you by keywords present in your profile page
2. Make sure insert keywords about your tech, tools and expertise
   • use keywords present in the job postings, since recruiters use those
   • do not abuse keywords count, LinkedIn has spam checking bots that could flag your profile
   • there is no way to check if you went overboard with keywords or not, use common sense
3. When a recruiter search for people, the best matches are put first on the list
   • being a connection is very important
   • you will get sorted based on your connection degree to the recruiter (1s 2nd 3rd)
   • basically, make as many connections with recruiters as you possible can
4. Keep your profile active by making and interacting with posts
   • try posting or commenting every day

Your profile rating is mostly defined by:

1. Keywords at specific and strategic spots
   • main tech goes to your title
   • current and previous keywords
     • recruiters have a tool specifically made for head hunting
     • they can filter by current and previous mentions of a keyword in your experiences
     • since we currently live in a senior-only market, recruiters filter out people who don’t have current and previous mentions of a given keyword
2. Keywods weights and recommendations
   • get recommendations or endorsements
3. Account activity
   • post stuff or get removed from algo
4. Mutual connections
5. Overall appeal
   • specialize your profile as much as possible
   • if you are a python dev, then make it the most focused pro python dev profile ever
   • repeat keywords in your experiences and projects
   • never generalize it
   • never write “I am studying xyz” anywhere

Getting more connections

Probably the most important thing on LinkedIn is connections or mutual connections.

In order to show up to recruiters, you need to grow your network.

So, Instead of

• grinding for days onward applying for jobs on the godless jobs board
• going into external sites and filling forms all over again and again
• wasting countless hours every day
• to maybe get noticed among the 2000+ applicants
• to then maybe get an interview opportunity

You could just… be contacted directly by a recruiter.

Theses are just some ideas to grow your network:

1. Make posts
   • 3+ per week
   • you must make posts, not an option
   • posts gets you connect invites from people
   • and also give you more visibility by showing the algo you are active
   • technical posts do not bring engagement
   • you need posts that generate tons of views, likes, reposts, comments etc
   • instead, focus on making interpersonal, tips, or even memes or jokes
   • yeah I know, makes no sense, welcome to 21st century
   • research whatever is currently trending
   • literally copy other people post ideas, who tf cares
2. Make connections
   • 100+ per week
   • you need > 1500 connections to hit the algo
3. Interact with posts
   • comment
   • share

Post template

It should contain:

1. Title
   • should be click bait
   • hide the real content by entering blank space
2. Content
   • make it short and to the point
   • give value to reader
   • or just post memes and garbage, somewhat works too
3. Hashtags
   • be precise
   • don’t overuse
4. Image
   • must exist
   • horizontal photos are bad

What if I am a junior and/or migrating careers?

Experience is what they care about the most, because it validates you can do the stuff. If you have none, then go get it somehow.

• having no experience or projects means you won’t be persuasive at all during the interview
• specially with so many layoffs and unemployed devs out there
• you should start producing projects right now
• degrees don’t matter that much these days
• even work experience doesn’t matter that much if you can not show them you can fix their problems
• recruiters aren’t stupid, they know those 10+ year “experienced” boomers just hit keys for most of the time and did not get any better at solving real world problems
• they want someone who can fix their problem
• the market values experience over education, and experience includes having projects
• if you are a compsci student with 0 projects, then you are gonna be jobless
• search for project ideas on google or chargpt and start working asap
• remember that you must use your projects/experience during the interview to show that you are the boss that is going to save the company from the boogeyman
• the tech you choose matters
  • find a tech that has high deman and low supply of devs
  • too much competition is bad
  • easy to use tech = more saturation
    • python and javascript are super saturated

Reasons a job opening exists

It is always important to remind ourselves why companies even hire:

1. A company opens a new role because it has problems it needs fixed, they are not doing you a favor
   • if they could, they would not hire anybody at all
   • hiring you usually means they make 3+ times the salary they gonna pay you
2. You have to figure out what that problem is, and present yourself as the one that can solve it
3. If you end being passive person in the interview, the non-passive candidates are gonna knock you out

The main problem types companies have:

1. It has more demand, so it needs more developers
   • they need to expand codebase
   • more clients = more demand = more features required = we need more developers
2. It has legacy code problems, so it needs maintainers
   • they need to mantain codebase
   • old legacy codebase = no longer works = need update = we need maintainers
3. It has a very specific problem, so it needs a specific developer
   • they have a performance problem
   • problem nobody can fix = we need an expert that fix it
   • more features = more code = too much code = hard to maintain = more bugs = low quality software = we need more maintainers/developers

Steps a company takes before hiring

Companies only want to find the perfect fit for the position. They want someone with experience and who matches the requirements.

1. Fisrt HR interview
   • remember that recruiters make money if you make make money
   • this is a vibes check warmup interview
   • they want to know
     • your experience coding
     • your experience with the tech they use
     • if you match their requirements
   • they gonna ask
     • tell me about you?
     • are you a normal person?
     • can you code?
     • got experience?
     • got degrees?
     • got certificates?
     • got projects?
   • you should look normal and make questions too
   • you should be honest and do not lie
   • you should show interest in solving their problems
   • you should present your projects and experiences that could help them solve their problems
   • bring out the salesman inside you
2. Hiring Manager interview
   • the person who interviews you is likely to be your future manager
   • the questions are gonna be similar to 1st interview
   • they want to know
     • why you want to work there
     • about your soft skills
     • about your hard skills
     • what value you can add to the team
     • about your overall performance as a team member
   • they gonna ask
     • why are you interested in the company?
     • what technical problems have you solved?
     • can you deal with pressure?
     • what hardships have you come across?
     • what experiences have you had?
     • what is your strongest point?
     • what is your weakest point?
   • you should ask questions too
   • you should behave almost the same way you did in the 1st interview
   • you should also be somewhat more serious too, since this mf is very likely your future manager
3. Technical interview
   • the coding interview
   • some tests are meant to be impossible or too difficult to finish solo
     • they want to figure out how you behave when overwhelmed
     • that is, they actually want you to call for help
     • that shows you are not the “I don’t need a team” type
   • they want to know
     • if you can actually code
     • if you can solve technical problems
     • if you can learn as you go
     • if you call for help or guidance, or make questions when in need
     • if you can communicate well
     • how you behave when facing hard to solve problems
     • how you behave when you need help or guidance
     • how you behave when under technical pressure
   • there are usually 4 tests
     • online platform test
     • week long project test
     • live coding test
     • live code review test
   • you should make questions regarding implementation details
   • the interviewer expects you to make questions about implementation details
   • you should ask for some guidance and opinions on how to proceed
   • you must extract info from them and implement things the way they expect you to
   • you must have a clear direction on what to do and how to do it before you code
   • remember that they are also testing your soft skills
   • communicating is also part of the developer job
   • in the real world teams receive tasks from high command, and always disscuss as a team on how to solve them, nobody should work alone ever
4. Last HR interview
   • contract setup interview
     • salary
     • vacations
     • benefits
     • stocks
   • you should always ask the salary range

Interview tips

1. Ask why is the position available
   • sometimes they take weeks to give you feedback
   • you need this info so you can properly plan your discourse selling strategy
   • is it because of demand?
     • talk about how you are amazing dev that can code any feature
     • mention project xyz where you implemented those features
   • is it because of legacy code?
     • talk about how you managed to update project xyz to newer version of framework xyz
   • is it because of quality?
     • talk about how you fixed a performance problem at project xyz by caching or something
2. Ask when the new employee should be hired and start working
   • helps you understand their timing better
3. Ask about their expectations on your productivity
   • allows you to measure yourself and know if you are up to the job
4. Ask about their tech
5. You need to sell your fish
   • pose yourself as the person that can fix their problems
   • cite experiences you had that are similar to what they want
6. Ask the salary range
   • you are gonna be asked about salary expectation
     • overshooting or even undershooting is bad
     • make sure you ask the salary range to make proper decision