Finding Companies

You can better target your search if you know which companies you’re most interested in working for. Big companies are easy to find—you can probably name a dozen national and international tech companies off the top of your head. You can identify candidate medium-sized (as well as large) companies through articles in trade and local business press. Many magazines and newspapers regularly compile lists of successful companies and rankings of the best places to work. (Take these rankings with a grain of salt: there’s often a lot of variation in quality of work life across large companies.) Most companies of this size also advertise at least some of their job openings on online job boards; these postings can help you identify companies to investigate even if the specific job posted isn’t right for you.

Small companies, especially early-stage startups, can be much more challenging to find. Often these companies are too small, too new, or too secretive to get much press. They may lack the resources to advertise their openings beyond their own website, which you can’t find unless you know the name of the company. One good way to find these companies is to ask friends and acquaintances if they know of startups that are hiring. Another technique is to use social networks. Additionally, you can look at online job posting boards (like Dice), angel investor sites like AngelList, or targeted job lists (such as alumni job posts) that you may have access to.

You can use some sites, such as LinkedIn, to search for people by profession within a region. Most people on these sites list the name of their company, so you can build a list of companies in a particular region by going through the results of this search. This can be laborious, but part of the payoff is that if you can’t find these companies any other way, neither can anyone else, so you’re likely to be competing with fewer applicants.

Getting Referrals

Referrals are the best way to find a job. Tell all your friends about what kind of job you’re looking for. Even if they don’t work for the kinds of companies that might hire you, they may know people who do. Coming from “Susan’s friend” or “Bill’s neighbor,” your résumé is sure to receive more careful consideration than the hundreds (or thousands) of anonymous résumés that come flooding in from online postings, job fairs, and other recruitment activities. Be sure to use your social networks, both real and virtual, to identify potential job opportunities.

Don’t feel you’re imposing on your friends and acquaintances. Companies often reward employees with big bonuses—as much as several thousand dollars—for successful referrals of talented software engineers. Your friends have a financial incentive to submit as many résumés as possible! (This is why referral bonuses are paid only after the referred person has been hired and has started working for the company.)

After you have a contact at a company, it’s up to you to make the most of it. Your approach depends on how well you know the contact.

If the contact is not a close friend, email the person to arrange a time to speak. When you speak to the person, ask about the company and the work environment. Then ask about any existing job openings. The person might not know of any—many employees know only about job openings in their immediate workgroup—but if you know jobs are available, point the person to the job listings. Explain why you’d be a good match for one of those openings. Then ask the person to submit your résumé. Before you end your conversation, always thank people for their time.

If the contacts are close friends, you can be more casual and just ask about job openings and if they’d refer you.

The best referrals are from people who have worked with you before. A current employee who vouches for your skills and accomplishments is the strongest type of referral. That’s why you need to keep track of former co-workers—you might want to work with them again one day.

Working with Headhunters

Particularly when labor markets are tight, some firms use outside recruiters known as headhunters to help them find candidates. In addition, you may find it useful to seek out headhunters and provide them with your information.

A headhunter can assist you with your job search and call you when a job opportunity that matches your skill set opens up. It may take a while, so don’t be discouraged.

Some headhunters are more helpful than others, so ask around to see if anyone you know has recommendations. If you can’t locate a headhunter this way, you can search the web for headhunters, recruiters, or staffing services. You can check out a prospective headhunter by asking for references, but be aware that headhunters deal with so many people that even those who frequently do a poor job probably have 5 or 10 satisfied clients who serve as references.

When you work with headhunters, you must understand their motivation: headhunters are paid only when an applicant they’ve referred is hired. It is therefore in a headhunter’s interest to put as many people as possible into as many jobs as possible as quickly as possible. A headhunter has no financial incentive to find you the best possible job—or to find a company the best possible applicant, for that matter. If you recognize that a headhunter is in business for the purpose of making a living and not for the purpose of helping you, you are less likely to be surprised or disappointed by your experiences. This is not to suggest that headhunters are bad people or that as a rule they take advantage of applicants or companies. Headhunters can be helpful and useful, but you must not expect them to look out for your interests above their own.

When a headhunter sends you a potential lead, you will usually receive a job description and a vague description of the type of company, but not the company name. This is to make sure the headhunter gets a commission if you apply for the job and get hired. It’s unethical to independently apply for a job that comes to you through a headhunter, but sometimes you might like to have more information about the job or company before you proceed. For example, you may determine that it’s a job you’ve already applied for, or at a location that would involve too long of a commute. The job description that the headhunter sends you is often copied verbatim from the company’s website, so by pasting it into your favorite search engine you can often find the original job listing.

Some companies don’t work with headhunters in any capacity, so don’t limit yourself by conducting your entire job search through a headhunter. As a corollary of this, avoid working with any headhunter who insists on being your exclusive representative. Finally, be aware that “headhunter” is a widely used term by people outside of this profession, but considered pejorative by most of the people who do this work, so it’s best not to use the word “headhunter” when you speak to one of them.

Contacting the Company Directly

You can also try contacting companies directly. The Internet is the best medium for this approach. Most companies’ web pages have instructions for submitting résumés. If the website lists specific openings, read through them and submit your résumé specifically for the openings that interest you. If you don’t have a contact within the company, it’s best to look for specific job openings: in many companies, résumés targeted at a specific job opportunity are forwarded directly to the hiring manager, whereas those that don’t mention a specific opening languish in the human resources database. A tech-oriented job site is a good place to start your search if you don’t have a specific company already in mind.

If a site doesn’t provide any directions for submitting your résumé, look for an email address to which you can send it. Send your résumé as both plain text in the body of the email (so the recipient can read it without having to do any work) and, unless you see instructions to the contrary, as an attached file so that the recipient can print a copy. A PDF file is ideal; otherwise, attach a Microsoft Word file. Do not send a file in any other format unless specifically requested. Be sure to convert the file so that it can be read by older versions of Word, and scan it with an antivirus program (you can often do this by mailing the resume to yourself as an attachment) to be absolutely certain that your résumé isn’t carrying any macro viruses.

Approaching a company directly like this is a bit of a long shot, especially when the résumé is sent to a generic human resources email address. Many companies use automated screening software to filter incoming résumés, so if your résumé lacks the right buzzwords, a human probably won’t even see it. Consult the appendix for tips to get your résumé past automated screeners. With a good résumé in hand it takes so little time and effort to apply that you have nothing to lose.

Job Fairs

Job fairs are an easy way to learn about and make contact with a lot of companies without much effort. Your chances of success with any one particular company at a job fair are low because each company sees so many applicants. However, given the number of companies at a job fair, your overall odds may still be favorable. If you collect business cards at the job fair and follow up with people afterward, you can separate yourself from the rest of the job fair crowd.

In addition, if they are available to you, college career centers, alumni organizations, and professional associations can also be helpful in finding jobs.

Technology-Driven Sites

Several sites exist where you “face-off” against bots and other candidates in coding contests, including TopCoder, HackerRank, and CodeWars. These sites can be an important part of your online profile, and they are also a great source for finding jobs. If you’re successful on these sites, you’ll find job offers coming your way because employers want the best programmers, and this is a convenient way to demonstrate your prowess.

Sites such as Hired are places where you upload your résumé, and then companies “offer” you a job before you interview. You can decide which offers you’re interested in before you interview with the company. Many startups use sites like this, and it may be the only way they hire! The main advantage of this approach is that you avoid wasting time with companies who aren’t going to make an offer you’d consider. However, the interviews can still be quite difficult and it can be challenging to get good offers if you’re inexperienced, have followed a nontraditional path, or are looking for a nonstandard work situation.

Screening Interviews

Screening interviews are usually conducted by phone or videoconference and last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. You should take the interview in a quiet room with no distractions and keep pen and paper handy to take notes. Screening interviews may also take place on the spot at a job fair or on campus as part of a college recruiting process.

Often, the initial screening interview is with a company recruiter or human resources representative. The recruiter wants to make sure that you’re interested in doing the job the company is hiring for, that you have the skills needed for the position, and that you’re willing to accept any logistical requirements of the position, such as relocation or travel.

If you make it past the recruiter, there’s normally a second screening interview in which you’re asked technical questions. These questions are designed to eliminate applicants who have inflated their résumés or are weak in skills that are key to the position. You should treat the technical phone interview as seriously as an on-site interview. Screening interviews are covered in detail in Chapter 4.

If the feedback from the screening interviews is positive, the recruiter will get back to you, usually within a week, to schedule an on-site interview at the company’s office.

On-Site Interviews

Your performance in on-site interviews is the biggest factor in determining whether you get an offer. These interviews consist mostly of a variety of technical questions: problems requiring you to implement a simple program or function; questions that test your knowledge of computers, languages, and programming; and sometimes even mathematics and logic puzzles. The majority of this book focuses on helping you answer these questions to succeed in your interviews.

Your on-site interviews usually last either a half day or a full day and typically consist of three to six interviews of 30 to 60 minutes each. Arrive early and well rested at the company’s office, and take a restroom break if at all possible before any of the interviewing starts. Turn off your phone. Under no circumstances should you interrupt your interview to read or answer a text or call.

You’ll likely be greeted by either the recruiter you’ve been dealing with or the hiring manager. You may get an informal tour before the actual interviewing starts, which is a good way to see what the working conditions are like at that location.

Your interviewers may be the members of the team you’ll work with if you are hired, or they may be engineers chosen at random from other groups within the company. Most companies have a rule that any interviewer can block an applicant from being hired, so all your interviews are important. Sometimes you may interview with two separate teams on the same day. Usually each group you interview with makes a separate decision about giving you an offer.

The company usually takes you out for lunch midway through your interview day. A free lunch at a nice restaurant or even at the company cafeteria is certainly enjoyable, but don’t let your guard down completely. If you make a negative impression at lunch, you may lose your offer. Be polite, and avoid alcohol and messy foods. These general guidelines apply to all company outings, including evening recruiting activities. Moderate drinking is acceptable during evening outings, but show restraint. Getting drunk isn’t likely to improve your chances of getting an offer.

At the end of the day, you may meet with the boss; if the boss spends a lot of time trying to sell you on working for the company, it’s a pretty strong indication that you’ve done well in your interviews and an offer will follow.

Dress

Job applicants traditionally wear suits to interviews. Most tech companies, though, are business casual—or even just casual. The running joke at some of these companies is that the only people who wear suits are job candidates and salespeople.

This is one area in which it’s critical to do some research. It’s probably not to your advantage to wear a suit if nobody else at the company is wearing one. On the other hand, if you wear jeans and a T-shirt, interviewers may feel you’re not showing sufficient respect or seriousness, even though they may be wearing jeans. Ask around to see what’s appropriate for the company. Expectations for dress vary by location and nature of business. For example, programmers working for a bank or brokerage may be expected to wear suits. You should aim to dress as well as or slightly more formally than you would be expected to dress at the job for which you’re interviewing.

In general, though, a suit or even a jacket and tie is overkill for most technical job interviews. Dress as if you were going out for a nice dinner and go light on the perfume or cologne.

Dealing with Recruiter Pressures

Recruiters often employ a variety of high-pressure tactics to get you to accept offers quickly. They may tell you that you must accept the offer within a few days if you want the job, or they may offer you an exploding signing bonus: a signing bonus that decreases by a fixed amount each day. Don’t let this bullying rush your decision. If the company wants you (and it probably does if it made you an offer), these limits and terms are negotiable, even when a recruiter claims they aren’t. You may have to go over the recruiter’s head and talk to your hiring manager if the recruiter refuses to be flexible. If these conditions are nonnegotiable, you probably don’t want to work for a rigid company full of bullies anyway.

Negotiating Your Salary

If, after careful consideration, the offer meets or exceeds your expectations, you’re all set. On the other hand, if you’re not completely happy with your offer, you should try to negotiate. Most people ask for too little, as opposed to too much. Don’t be afraid to “lean in,” no matter who you are or what your background is. All too often, applicants assume that offers are nonnegotiable and reject them without negotiation or accept offers they’re not pleased with. Almost every offer is negotiable to some extent.

You should never reject an offer for monetary reasons without trying to negotiate. When you negotiate an offer that you would otherwise reject, you hold the ultimate high card. You’re ready to walk, so you have nothing to lose.

Even when an offer is in the range you were expecting, it’s often worthwhile to negotiate. As long as you are respectful and truthful in your negotiations and your requests are reasonable, you’ll almost never lose an offer just because you tried to negotiate it. In the worst case, the company refuses to change the offer, and you’re no worse off than before you tried to negotiate.

If you decide to negotiate your compensation package, here’s how you do it:

• Figure out exactly what you want. You may want a signing bonus, better pay, or more stock options. Be realistic given the state of the company and know the typical compensation before you start. You can ask friends or research it on sites like Glassdoor to find out.
• Arrange a phone call with the appropriate negotiator, usually the recruiter. Your negotiator is usually the same person who gave you the terms of your offer. Don’t call negotiators blind because you may catch them at an inconvenient time.
• Explain your case. Say you appreciate receiving the offer and explain why you’re not completely happy with it. For example, you could say, “I’m pleased to have received the offer, but I’m having a hard time accepting it because it’s not competitive with my other offers.” Or you could say, “Thank you again for the offer, but I’m having trouble accepting it because I know from discussions with my peers and from talking with other companies that this offer is below market rates.” If the negotiator asks you to go into greater detail about which other companies have offered you more money and how much, or where your peers work, you’re under no obligation to do so. You can easily say, “I keep all my offers confidential, including yours, and feel that it’s unprofessional to give out that sort of information.”
• Thank negotiators for their time and help and say that you’re looking forward to hearing from them again. Negotiators rarely change an offer on the spot. The company’s negotiator may ask you what you had in mind or, conversely, tell you that the offer is nonnegotiable. Claiming that the offer is nonnegotiable is often merely a hardball negotiation tactic, so in either case you should respond by politely and respectfully spelling out exactly what you expect in an offer and giving the negotiator a chance to consider what you’ve said.

Many people find negotiation uncomfortable, especially when dealing with professional recruiters who do it every day. It’s not uncommon for someone to accept an offer as close enough just to avoid having to negotiate. If you feel this way about negotiation, try looking at it this way: you rarely have anything to lose, and even modest success in negotiation can be rewarding. If it takes you a 30-minute phone call to get your offer increased by $3,000, you’ve made $6,000 per hour. That’s a pretty good return on your time. Remember that the best time to get more money is before you accept the job. When you’re an employee, the company holds the power and salary increases are typically much smaller and harder to come by.

Accepting and Rejecting Offers

At some point, your negotiations will be complete, and you will be ready to accept an offer. After you inform a company you’re accepting its offer, be sure to keep in touch to coordinate start dates and paperwork. The company may do a background check on you at this point to verify your identity and your credentials.

Be professional about declining your other offers. Contacts are important, especially in the technology industry where people change jobs frequently. You’ve no doubt built contacts at all the companies that made you offers. It’s foolish to squander these contacts by failing to inform them of your decision. If you had recruiters at other companies, you should email them with your decision. (Don’t expect them to be overjoyed, however.) You should also personally call the hiring managers who made you an offer to thank them and let them know what you decided. For example, you can say, “I want to thank you again for extending me the offer. I was impressed with your company, but I’ve decided it’s not the best choice for me right now. Thank you again, and I appreciate your confidence in me.” Besides simply being classy, this approach can often get a response such as, “I was pleased to meet you, and I’m sorry that you won’t be joining us. If things don’t work out at that company, give me a call, and maybe we can work something out. Best of luck.”

This gives you a great place to start the next time you look for work.