
Ask HN: How did you organize your technical job search? - tuhins
I&#x27;ve found the process quite cumbersome for a number of reasons:<p>- Parallelizing processes across recruiters and companies<p>- Email communication and scheduling is time consuming<p>- Simply clicking apply doesn&#x27;t have a great conversion rate so I&#x27;ve spent lots of time finding connections in my network and generally coming with up ways to highlight myself.<p>I&#x27;ve seen things like Huntr and JobTrack and heard about many people using spreadsheets; how else do people manage this process?
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eggie5
I realised there is a lot of variance in the process and only a small amount
of the variance is under my control. So much is outside factors due to random
chance. Therefore, I decided that since I have little control over the
outcome, then the more effort I put into an application, the more energy/time
I waste. So instead I decided to optimise for quantity and not quality. The
way I scale it up is to automatically apply to everything on who's hiring
monthly posts that have an email address. I have a std email template that I
have honed over the months. Otherwise I can apply on a website in under 45
seconds. Every month I'll spend 20 minutes get out at least 30 applications of
which 80% will convert to recruiter calls of which about 95% will convert to
tech screens of which %10 (I suck at coding puzzles under pressure) will
convert to onsites of which 15% will convert to offers.

As long as you diligently use your calendar and keep notes for each company
it's pretty easy to manage this.

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probinso
Finding interesting work is difficult. Learning stuff is fun. Watch conference
talks for every conference that represents your professional interests. For
all speakers that you enjoy, track their company on site like `linkedin`. This
allows you to have a quick list of interesting companies that will dynamically
update as they change their names and are bought out. This should be done at
all times, not just when looking for work.

Track Coverletters with git. Each company get's its own branch. Repository it
private. Easy to make derivative coverletters for companies of overlapping
disciplines.

Only one current resume. Resumes do not need to be fit to a company. That is
what a coverletter is for.

Networking is more valuable than most believe. Contribute to your developer
community and help others get hired as often as possible. Connect with people
and discuss your projects at meetups. Cross-list job postings for different
forums and slack channels of similar content.

Often high end recruiters represent many companies, they can increase your
exposure quickly.

Set a fixed number of applications per week. Try to fill with interesting, but
by the end of the week meet your quota. You don't always need cool work,
random applications can fill the remaining quota, and can be surprisingly
fruitful.

Do not waste time on overly complicated application processes, unless you are
very passionate about the company subjecting you to that. They may never read
it.

Help young programmers. They will grow your whiteboarding, puzzle solving, and
communication skills. Remember that you are lucky to have young programmers as
a resource.

Update resume every month. Any work someone has paid you for is valuable, you
may forget some of it. You can always prune down later.

When possible, send follow up emails.

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zapperdapper
There's the searching itself, and then all the additional work. It can be
quite cumbersome, especially with multiple tailored CVs, letters of
application, multiple agencies and so on. I'm back on LinkedIn again and
finding that helps ease the burden somewhat.

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cmorgan8506
I just used a google doc to be honest. I'd write a section for each
application that I would use to write the job title, requirements, cover
letter, etc.

I hear you though, it can be really overwhelming when you're submitting
through so many different platforms.

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ecesena
For me the best solution has always been connecting directly to recruiters in
my linkedin network. It saved me a lot of time, typically they only ask you
for the resume and no cover letter. Also, among different strategies I tried,
it's been the one with most "yes".

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git-pull
If you do startups, find places with healthy engineering cultures.

Try this out website: [https://www.keyvalues.com/](https://www.keyvalues.com/)

You can select multiple categories of what the company values, so you have a
better fit before you ever walk in.

