Start with a plan, not LinkedIn Jobs — Approach (3/3)
How can I use my time effectively? Which job boards should I use? How do I get referrals? Now that you understand your profile and your target companies, let's connect them with your approach.
This is the last part of a three part series on starting your job search. Read part one here, and part two here.
Now that you have created your profile, understood the type of companies you’d like to apply to, let’s bridge them by planning out your approach.
A marathon, not a sprint
People forget (or optimistically ignore) that job searching a long and arduous process. I work with software training bootcamps like Ironhack during their career weeks, and in 2019, 80% of Ironhack’s graduates found a job within 3 months after graduation. The pandemic only made the timeline even longer. Among jobseekers I coached in the past year, the time it took them ranged between 1.5 months to 7 months (and some are still looking), with the majority landing somewhere between 3 to 6 months. For those looking for a job while fully employed, taking longer might be less of an issue; but for those who don’t have the luxury, everyday is precious and it can be a lot easier to lose focus.
At the same time, there are many things that you can do, such as following up or networking (here’s my detailed guide on how to network), while you are waiting for the next interview stage to take place. Creating a job search timeline with smaller milestones can also help you react quickly in case things take longer than expected.
Timeline? Predictable
Luckily in the year 2021, applying for jobs does not have to feel like throwing your message bottle into the ocean and never hear back. Many companies post their interview process online, and in tech startups, processes have become pretty predictable. Here are the 5 typical steps (maybe less, depends on the role) you’ll take in an interview process in tech startups, the time it takes to get through each stage, and the number of candidates who pass to them.
(Hey marketers and salespeople: yes! We are talking pipelines!)
Application Review: send in your application and wait for a response. On the other end, the recruiter / HR manager / hiring manager might wait for a few days for applications to come in, then reads your applications and schedules first interviews or screening calls. This stage usually takes about 1 week. If you haven’t heard back after a week, this would be a good time to follow up.
Screening: first interview with the company. The recruiter / HR manager / hiring manager “screens” out candidates who have major mismatches with company expectations (will dive into this in a later issue). This stage will take less than a week. Based on my experience, it takes on average 10 screening calls for each hire.
Hiring Manager Interview: meet the team lead and have a more in-depth, technical conversation. This stage could take 1 week, since hiring managers tend to be senior leaders in the company that are usually very busy and hard to schedule for. The hiring manager will speak to 5-6 candidates.
Challenge: companies might ask you to do an assessment or task or a coding challenge to understand your role-specific skills. The speed of this stage depends on how quickly you can finish the task, but typically it takes 4-5 days. About 5 candidates will move onto this stage.
Onsite Interview: now mostly remote, the onsite stage usually consists of interviews with the rest of the team and other important stakeholders like the CEO. Because a few interviewers are involved at this stage, it might take 1 week or more. If you make it to the onsite interview stage, you are most likely 1 of 3 (or 2) candidates in the race. Congrats!
Of course, these numbers are averages based on my personal experience. Here’s a very important thing to remember: if it’s been 2 weeks and you haven’t heard back, it’s likely that progress is stalled because interviewers are on holiday, or the hiring team wants to wait for more candidates to progress, or that the recruiter is working on 20+ roles and extremely overworked. Too often candidates face radio silence while we are busy putting out fires behind the scenes. This does not necessarily mean you are rejected, but you should start thinking about applying to other places to avoid betting on one.
Back to the timeline — do a bit of math and you’ll realize each interview process takes a total of about 28 days / 4 weeks. You might go to later stages with a 3-4 companies before landing an ideal offer. Therefore, using and managing a job application tracker could help you gain control over how things progress. I made a Trello template that you can use right away (email me if you are interested!), but any tool like Google Sheets, Notion, Asana, Airtable would work. Remember the Tier 1, 2, 3 companies we talked about last time? Mark them onto your job application tracker.
(Hey marketers and salespeople: yes! It’s a CRM!)
I’m ready, can I go to LinkedIn Jobs now?
Onto the final part of our journey, and the answer to your question: it’s up to you!
For your information, the platform used for the application will always be tracked by recruiters. LinkedIn Jobs is only one of the many ways you can apply. Here are 4 of the most common ways to apply to jobs, and what each source mean to the recruiter.
Company website
The most reliable way of finding out about jobs. A company would typically create a job in their ATS (Applicant Tracking System), then link the jobs to their website, then post the job on additional job boards if they need. Most job boards only allow jobs to be online for a limited amount of time, therefore the company website is most reliable. Company websites typically have a career page where they talk about their company culture, and needless to say, reading the page before applying would help you cater your application (or decide if you want to apply). Knowing that the candidate has at least looked at the company website would make me think that they are probably not spamming every company.
Referrals
Probably the most underrated and under-explored way of landing a job. Most companies have a referral program, which means if an employee introduces a person to interview with the company and that person gets hired, the employee gets a referral bonus, which in cases I’ve seen, is a cash bonus that ranges between 250 EUR to 500 EUR to 2000 EUR and even 5000 EUR. That’s a lot of money!
I don’t know anyone at my target companies, how can I get a referral? You might ask. This is where you should reach out to employees at those companies online and ask for it directly. As long as you ask politely and offer them a chance to speak to you, you could land in a fast track. I wrote my template for asking for referrals here.
Job Boards
Websites like LinkedIn Jobs are what we call job boards. They are either free or paid, and will typically host the job for 14-30 days. Posting on a paid job board can cost around 80 EUR to 400 EUR. LinkedIn is an example of an expensive job board, which means that companies might not always post their jobs on LinkedIn. Having spoken to product people at a major job board, I learned that job boards discourage candidates who send applications en masse due to complaints from the companies. The interviewee mentioned in my research in part 1 was lucky to have landed his job that way. Don’t forget — the customers are the ones who pay. Jobseekers don’t pay to use LinkedIn, therefore LinkedIn doesn’t really serve jobseekers.
Job boards can be region-specific and function-specific. Make sure to check out the ones most relevant to your needs. Here are a few examples:
Startup-specific: Angel List, Startup.Jobs
Region-specific: BuiltInLA (you can replace LA with other major US cities and there’s probably a BuiltIn for that), Gründerszene (Germany), Arbeitnow (Germany)
Product-focused: Lenny’s Job Board (by Lenny Rachitsky from Lenny’s Newletter, probably most well-known Substack newsletter), ProductHunt Jobs
Engineering-focused: Who is hiring thread on Hackernews (debatable whether it’s a job board), StackOverflow Jobs
Online Communities
Last but not least, online communities created by professionals in a specific field can be an unexpected way to find jobs. They often organize themselves in Meetup groups and Slack groups. Almost all of these online communities have a dedicated channel for sharing jobs in the field, and it’s becoming a more popular way for recruiters to contact candidates. I have been in 10+ Slack groups and my colleagues have made a few hires from them.
Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash
That’s it for our 3 part series on creating your job search strategy! What are you interested to read about? Comment or email me your thoughts.