Job Search & Interview Mastery

Wait for one of three triggers: (1) You've mastered your current role (stopped learning, no growth path), (2) Comp is 15%+ below market (check Levels.fyi + Blind for your role/level/company), or (3) Your company shows signals of trouble (layoffs, hiring freeze, key departures). Switching every 18–24 months compounds salary; jumping too early burns goodwill and looks erratic. If stable + learning + paid fairly, stay 3 years. If stagnant or underpaid, switch within 6 months.

Three channels: (1) LinkedIn Open to Work badge + 'open to recruiter messages' setting, recruiters scan this daily. Spend 10 mins/week responding to inbound. (2) Referrals from current network (tell 5 people you're open, ask them to forward your resume, refers close at 40% vs cold applies at 5%). (3) Build public profile: write, speak, contribute to open source, top recruiters hunt GitHub/Twitter/blogs for passive candidates. Passive sourcing beats active apply 10:1 in offer quality.

Golden rule: always negotiate, never accept first offer. Tactics: (1) Research comp on Levels.fyi/Blind, know your walk-away number (your BATNA = best alternative). (2) Don't name a number first, ask 'what's your range?' Most companies have 20–30% salary band width. (3) If they lowball, say 'I was expecting $[X]' (name a specific number, not a range). (4) Get competing offers if possible, say 'I have another offer at $[X], can you match?' (5) Negotiate equity, title, start date together, don't accept salary then ask for more RSUs. (6) Get offer letter in writing before you quit.

Red flag, most take-homes are unpaid work that wastes 4–8 hours. Counter: (1) Ask if there's a code review + feedback step, if not, it's a screen, not an assessment. (2) Cap yourself: 2 hours max, if it's not done, send what you have + explanation. (3) Offer to pair-code with an engineer instead, instant, real-time, fair assessment. (4) Check Triplebyte/Hired/Interviewing.io for companies that skip take-homes entirely. (5) If they insist and it's a strong company, do a basic solution fast, they're usually looking for 'does it run', not perfection. Don't over-polish.

Scenario: You have Offer A at $150k + Offer B at $160k. Want both to compete. (1) Accept A verbally (don't sign), then tell B 'I have competing offer at $160k, can you go higher?' (2) If B matches or beats, go back to A with B's offer, A often increases to keep you. (3) Never bluff, only use offers you actually have. (4) Be transparent: 'I'm comparing multiple offers, here's what I'm hearing from market', ethical + stronger than secret leverage. (5) Make it about fit + comp together, 'The role is great, I want to make this work, here's my target.' Companies expect 1–2 counter-rounds.

Cold apply: 5–10% response rate, 2–5% interviews scheduled. Referral: 40–50% response rate, 20–30% interviews scheduled. Networking: build the relationship BEFORE you need a job. Tactics: (1) DM senior engineers at your target company on LinkedIn (not recruiter, talk to team). Share something thoughtful: 'I read your blog on X, curious about Y.' (2) Attend meetups, conferences, Discord communities, meet people who are or know people at your target. (3) Warm intro (ask mutual connection for intro) beats cold email 10:1. (4) Most offers come from 'someone I know' not 'I applied', spend 70% on relationships, 30% on applications. (5) If at company X, best time to job-hunt is NOW while you have insider networks; leave then job-hunt alone is 10x harder.

ATS = Applicant Tracking System that parses resume for keywords. How to pass it and humans: (1) Use 'reverse job description', copy 5–7 key words/phrases from the job posting, work them naturally into your bullet points. (2) Use simple formatting: no graphics, no boxes, no colors, no columns, one-column PDF only. (3) Bullet structure: verb + action + metric. Bad: 'Worked on database optimization.' Good: 'Optimized query performance, reducing API latency from 2.3s to 340ms (85% improvement), enabling 3M+ daily requests.' (4) Skills section at bottom with comma-separated list matching job posting (ATS scans this). (5) Use JobScan.co or Teal to check your ATS match score against job posting, target 70%+. (6) PDF over DOCX (some ATS chokes on Word formatting). (7) Don't abbreviate, write 'Amazon Web Services' not 'AWS' for first mention, ATS struggles with abbreviations.