Strategies and Metrics: What Worked (and What Didn't) in My Recent Job Search

Filipe de Leonel Batista

Frontend Developer | React Especialist | Typescript | Javascript

"This job search happened at a calm time, when I was growing in the company. This didn't matter much, as the contract ended, so I was faced with the dreaded market again."

TLDR;

• Professional Headshot Photo: Preferably, use the same one on all social networks.
• Professional social media cover: Include links to the social media platforms you want to work on.
• Dual language profiles: Set your profile in English as your primary language and Portuguese as your secondary language.
• Invest in your GitHub Readme: Document your major projects in the best possible way.
• Content creation: Publish on platforms such as LinkedIn, Tabnews, Dev.to , X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Choose the channels where you want to work with organic SEO.
• Personal website: Think about SEO, buy a domain, and if you can, create a professional email or one specifically for this purpose.
• Recruitment Funnel: Use a system or personal journal to record feedback and improve with the help of AI.
• Interview recording: transcribe audio, analyze with AI and improve your presentation; record frequently asked questions.
• STAR Method Resume: Organize your experiences following the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result). EXTREMELY IMPORTANT
• Contact Goal: Set custom contact goals and maintain discipline in sending one-to-one.

There was a moment when I heard a testimony from a colleague in the community, who said something like he felt frustrated after sending out 300 resumes and not having been called for any interviews.

This left me with a latent thought on the subject. It was then that I created a system to store the metrics of the selection process and I talk a little about this process, which is still under development, in this article in PT-BR but is already advanced. I am sure that it helped me a lot to get my current job, and in this link in PT_BR I tell you about some results and talk about the frustration during the process.

The results I got were as follows:

General metrics chart

Selection process funnel

From June to August 2024, with a success rate of 0.73% .

• Contact made: 137
• Interview scheduled: 23
• Interview conducted: 16
• Technical interview scheduled: 6
• Technical interview conducted: 6
• Test completed: 4

Selection process funnel chart

Feedback received/not received

From June to August 2024, with a return rate of 28.04% .

Feedback chart

Admission/Rejected

From June to August 2024, with a success rate of 0.73% .

Success rate chart

Search methods

• Feedbacks Received: 107
• Acceptance Rate: 0.735%

Chart about search methods

Sit down, here comes the story...

From here on, I will tell my story during this period. I would be very grateful if you would like to know more details that I will tell below, but the general thing has already been said above, so thank you for reading this far! ??

What was the lesson learned from this?

"First of all, I invite you to Connect on LinkedIn , where I will share many things about processes and how to improve."

?? A little rant:To give you some context, I am a father of twins and married (because life needs challenges ??). Receiving X/3 unemployment benefits made me worried. I started looking for a job, connecting with recruiters and was very supported by my management at the same company.

With that, I started looking for a job, connecting with recruiters and receiving a lot of support from my management at the same company, who worked hard to keep me at the company. I am very grateful for the support.

My situation was that of a REFERENCE EMPLOYEE of the company in 5/6 points evaluated by the company, with culture in my veins, but one thing that hit hard and was tough was that the internal vacancies were not aligned with my techs.

Unfortunately, I was unable to relocate internally within the company I was at and returned to the market.

In the market, I realized an important point that I want to bring up here: Don't have a pet stack/technology. Be an expert in one thing and then study other things.

So, I'm an expert in REACT JS and React Native . I started to understand that I would need to go back to being fullstack or focus on backend with Java, Python, Node JS, PHP and maybe Ruby and Go .

I sought training and learned a lot in Java, Spring Boot, PHP Laravel and Python Flask , but I don't feel that I am as prepared as I am in React JS to work directly with these technologies. However, I understand and can perform some operations by understanding the concepts.

It was then that I realized that I didn't understand many things by name, but I knew how to do what was necessary. So, I started studying and understanding concepts and preparing for interviews, because I already understood a lot of things.

With that, I got some feedback. I'll tell you more about the first one in this article in pt-BR, but it was a point where I started paying attention to the details of my portfolio and LinkedIn, which were kind of neglected, and my personal image was pretty bad. It was then that my wife and my father helped me understand how to improve my personal image to make a better impression.

The most important feedback comes from close up, you just need to take a moment to understand it. After understanding it, my wife prepared me for some interviews, even suggesting some hair and clothing precautions to take, even in remote interviews. This was important.

Another piece of feedback was to stop shooting in all directions and focus on what you are good at. That was hard to hear, seeing as the vacancies were more for Backend at the time. So, I went out there and focused on FRONTEND DEVELOPER and REACT JS SPECIALIST.

This helped me organize my LinkedIn, and then opportunities started to appear in my area, but most of them asked for requirements that were still too complex for me.

About the Metrics and Strategies I Used

I want to address this in more detail in another post, but I can say that organizing your data and measuring your dedication and delivery capacity is crucial to achieving success in searches.

Since the whole process was new to me, I started with the basics, tracking the statuses. As I went along, I realized that this wasn’t going to be enough. So I created a way to record the statuses I navigated throughout the selection process, and at each stage, I added feedback from the recruiter or an insight I had when I was interviewed. This added a layer of understanding to my approaches, albeit simple, and made me see areas where I needed to improve.

Another important point was recording the interviews, transcribing them, and, with the help of AI, generating feedback based directly on my presentation, which helped me to better prepare. This feedback was fed into a system I created, where the AI consulted data, such as my transcribed presentation, my resume, and the job descriptions, to identify where I did not perform so well. This really enriched my experience, although I still need to refine the AI prompt to get more interesting points, but that is a technical topic for another article.

An Extremely Useful Tip

I wish someone had given me this tip before. Guys, in the world of ATSs (Applicant Tracking Systems), we, who are DEVS, should have this on the tip of our tongue: presenting our experiences using the STAR technique. An ATS takes this into account a lot, and when you customize your resume for a job, it is a good idea to change the descriptions of your experiences to include keywords from the job. This will improve your resume's ranking in an ATS. But I never told you that, okay?! ??

Create a cover letter, and some companies ask for a video. The letter needs to be personalized for each position, taking into account the person you are hiring. The video should also be personalized, but you can invest some time in a generic video and, if necessary, create a personalized presentation video for each position. The letter itself will already help a lot.

With all this ready, I received feedback from a friend to contact CTOs or Tech Leads directly, as these people usually call those who are close to them. Therefore, if you are on their radar, it is easier to be hired without going through a selection process, as the vacancy is already in their minds.

With that in mind, I created a personalized email sending area for each company and person. I registered the company, its mission, values, and so on, and included the contact or contacts at the company to whom I would send a message. I provided the context of my message and asked the AI to generate the body of the email based on that and my CV. That way, I already had the CV adjusted for that company and sent an email containing key words from the company aligned with my profile. After the first contact, I waited for a response and made a second call to connect. In this second call, I talked about a project I was developing and the technical lessons I had learned, inviting them to connect with me.

This has made my networking expand a lot in the last few months.

Despite this, not everything is perfect, and there are still aspects of my psychology that manifested themselves during the interviews and research. Following the metrics closely, I ended up getting very frustrated, and this is a point I need to share with you. If you are not mentally strong, the numbers can be very demotivating. I received this feedback from my analyst. If you have the opportunity, consult a psychologist to better understand this type of issue related to the mind.

All this to say that...

This was a process for me. I shared several points that may end up giving you some tips on what you can do for yourself. You have to understand that everyone's scenario may vary, and so will the results. If you compare yourself to others, you will fail. Try to compare yourself to yourself, improve your presentation and analyze the numbers. That way, you will be able to improve.