TCW #046 | 9 lessons from the 2023 job search trenches

Themes and learnings gleaned from coaching >40 tech job seekers this year. Use these to fuel and simplify your 2024 job search.

Hey, it’s 📣 Coach Erika! Welcome to a ✨ free edition✨ of The Career Whispers. Each week I tackle reader questions about tech careers: how to get one, how to navigate them, and how to grow and thrive in your role. If you’re new, here are a few posts you might enjoy:

• TCW #037: How to get <insert role> experience when you lack <insert role> experience

• TCW #040: A menu of questions to ask your future manager

• TCW #032: The 4-hour Job Search

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As 2023 winds down, I compiled a list of job search themes and maneuverable lessons that worked for my clients this year. I hope that these can help other job searchers in their 2024 job searches.

Since late 2022, it's been harder than ever for laid-off tech workers to find jobs, but there is hope. People are landing jobs. You can too.

I crafted 9 key themes and lessons I've gleaned this year from helping >40 people navigate this brave new world in tech job searching.

Anyone can use these to clarify their job search approach and improve their TTJ (time to job).

Let’s dive in.

How tech job searching suddenly became extra hard

But first…a brief history lesson of how we got here, from my lens as a coach and tech career writer:

😁 2014-2019: the glorious tech War for Talent. Historically low interest rates fueled a capital environment that made it easy to start and fund companies. This meant high demand for a relatively small pool (supply) of tech workers. Job searching was as simple as looking through inbound emails from recruiters, picking a few, doing a couple of quick interview rounds, and starting a new job within a month or two.

😱 2020: fearing an economic collapse at the start of the pandemic, tech leaders freaked out and did proactive layoffs. Recruiters were hit especially hard, as well as “nice to have” functions like QA, marketing, project/program management, and analysts. Job searching was hard to navigate in a world just learning how to "do remote," but candidates adapted quickly.

😌 2021: job searching was easy peasy. As the COVID economy was boosted by government incentives, companies returned to hiring in full force. The Great Resignation took off in parallel, striking fear into the hearts of employers, who responded by improving benefits programs, increasing comp bands, adding promotion opportunities, and handing out retention bonuses.

😵‍💫 2022: job seekers continued to have it easy for the first two quarters, but by summer, the ground started to tremble with the early waves of Tech Layofftopia, a job security massacre fueled by capital markets shifting and interest rates levering up. Over 420,000 tech workers would eventually lose their jobs over the next 12-18 months.

😓 2023: continued Layofftopia pains created an incredibly soft job market (few jobs, countless applicants) that few in tech have navigated before. The old ways of job searching died a sudden, tragic death. Gone are the days of reliably steady recruiter inbounds, mach-speed interview processes, playing coy to juice offers, and receiving multiple concurrent job offers.

2023 Job Search Themes and Lessons

#1 You’re not getting recruiter inbounds, but neither is anyone else. Don’t take it personally, build a new system. Many of my clients feared the worst: that they were spoiled fruit and everyone else was getting inbounds. Not true. Inbounds are way down as the number of open roles has decreased.

Lesson: Job searchers have to re-learn how to set up job alerts and find their favorite job boards, how to research companies and track posted roles, and how to be one of the first to be considered for a newly opened role.

#2 Cold applications got colder. But online networking has never been easier. The days of LinkedIn EasyApply or cold applying generating a reasonable rate of return are a distant memory, as recruiting functions were hit hardest with layoffs and, frankly, there just isn’t enough recruiting bandwidth to review the deluge of cold applications.

Lesson: Job searchers need to (re-)learn how to network their way into new roles, including through niche online communities and by getting over their fears of public scrutiny and job searching in the open.

#3 Referral mania has slowed. Get comfortable asking strangers to help you. Getting a referral suddenly got harder, as the ratio of people you know with jobs shrank overnight. Some companies even quietly removed referral bonuses, reducing the incentives for their employees to make referrals.

Lesson: Get comfortable with asking strangers to refer you. There’s a simple art to getting referred in a soft market.

#4 Job seekers seek shelter (in large, public companies). Be the salmon...try a startup. If you got laid off twice in 12 months by startups promising you rocketship career growth, you’d probably want to seek shelter in public companies as well. And that’s exactly what is happening. Safety is the name of the job search game in 2023. But when everyone is zigging, maybe you should zag?

Lesson: Consider startups. No, they can’t promise you infinite liquidity and zero chance that the whole thing folds, but even when Google has infinite liquidity, they still did layoffs. Fear of layoffs means that startup roles often have fewer applicants, resulting in less competition and faster hiring.

Plus, at a startup, you can ask about the runway and know precisely when the funding ends (and so does your job). No public company can offer this kind of transparency.

#5 The talent market is crowded. Bring your A-game or don’t bother. I’m seeing principal-level and manager-level candidates looking at senior IC roles and directors considering manager-level roles, all the while senior ICs are also applying to senior IC roles, and managers are applying to manager roles. It’s crowded at all levels, as candidates are casting a wider net and looking at a wider array of titles and levels.

Lesson: Be excellent. No really, you gotta give it your all. Back in 2021 or 2014-2019, you could just phone it in and still get offered a job. That was the great thing about the War for (Tech) Talent. But in a soft market, you need to show up 100%. My advice is to take fewer shots on goal but to line yourself up for the shot before you shoot (ie: skip cold applications, get that resume gorgeous, master your career story, network your way into interviews, and then give it your all on (interview) game day).

#6 Intellectual rigor beats frameworks. Hone exceptional thought. In a market where each job has dozens of applicants, employers know they don't have to settle. Relying on the old tools of the (interviewing) trade may put you in the upper quartile, but that may not be good enough anymore. You need to be the best, and the only way to do that is to stop leaning on response frameworks alone.

Lesson: know the interview frameworks, but apply first principles thinking, first. Take intellectual risks and be sure to form and share strong, researched opinions. This means you don’t just say what you think they want to hear. Say what needs to be said. We all want to hire someone whose work and abilities we respect, not just someone we like. The bar for cognitive abilities has never been higher, prepare to vault.

#7 You do not have to take a pay cut or a title slash. But you do have to do extra legwork. One of my clients just accepted a role with a 5% pay increase over the role from which she was laid off. She told me that her peers (n=5ish) who were laid off from their large-scale fintech firm at the same time were taking 25% pay cuts to land new roles. The difference? When she interviewed, she was the interviewers’ top choice every time. How? She did the work and learned how to articulate her worth consistently through her resume, LinkedIn, and every in-person interaction. Rather than trying to fit her into the budget they had set for the role, they upgraded the role and upped the base salary +$35,000/year (a rarity in this market!)

Lesson: Interviewing in 2023-2024 is 1000% more work than we’re used to (the War for Talent really spoiled us). Do your research on the industry, the company, the role, and the manager before you walk in the door. Don’t phone it in on your case studies or take-home assignments, as frustrating as they may be. Being fully prepared will help you present yourself and your fresh take on the role with more confidence and convince them to take a chance on you.

To polish up your interview skills, consider taking my quick and affordable interview prep course: First Round Ready.

#8 Flat titles are a win. Forget landing a “stretch role” in this market. When the talent market is this soft, it’s a win to land a job at the same level and with any comp increase. That’s just going to have to be good enough for most candidates, so please don’t sabotage yourself by assuming everyone else is getting big comp increases and title jumps. They aren’t.

Lesson: focus your job search on a Niche of One — that is, the one role/job title that you are uniquely qualified to own and ace without question. Tailor your career story to this title. Tailor your resume to this title. Tailor your pitch for this title. Stick the landing for a role you know how to do, and you'll get hired faster.

#9 Great managers beat great companies. Find one and work for them. Seeing 422,000 of our fellow tech workers get laid off by the same companies that wooed them just months before has reminded us that companies are companies, not people. Many of my clients have shifted their job search focus from finding the next catapulting company for their career to finding the next catapulting boss for their career.

Lesson: In this environment, you never know when the company will make cuts and the job will leave you, but the relationships remain. Target great bosses you’ve worked with in the past, or any manager that others recommend highly. Network with them, ask them hard questions, and backchannel like crazy. Once you find a good boss, lock them in.

Closing Thoughts

Job searching is a vulnerable time, even in the best job markets. When the market is as dour as the current tech job market, it’s an exceptionally vulnerable time.

If you make smart networking moves, focus on a Niche of One job search, show up more prepared than ever, bring your interviewing A game, and use the 9 lessons above to fuel your job search, you do not have to:

• Downlevel

• Accept a title regression

• Lower your compensation expectations

Most importantly, please try to stay sane in your job search and remember that you are phenomenally talented, no matter what job market you are in.

You will land a job! I know this because I coach people how to land jobs every day, and everyone putting in the work eventually lands a fantastic job.

🎉 That’s a wrap! Subscribe to stay tuned!

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