Students are looking for work

Every person in his life had a moment when he had to look for work. Looking at the people around me, you often see how they are tormented: “To write here or not to write? What will happen if I write? Will they accept me? If they refuse? Here we need this, this, and this! ”And so on, on and on ... This collection of questions can be continued for quite a long time. But, for the most part, they all boil down to one single dictum: "People are afraid to take the first step." And the fear arises at almost every stage of the choice of work, starting from the search for the company, ending with the interview and waiting for its results. I will tell you how I was looking for a job, why look so good. What are the pros and cons in this search method.

Job search I divide into several stages:

1. Summary
2. Cover Letter to Resume
3. Search companies
4. Job interviews
5. Waiting for answers and selection

So, c. I will start with the most battered one, something that has been discussed more than one hundred times.

1. Summary .

For the most part, this section describes a repetition of one of the articles that was written on Habré, under the influence of which I made my resume. Here I will summarize what I liked. The approach to resume writing, in my opinion, should be informal. No need to list 250 thousand of their achievements (if, of course, there are any). Why? Stand on the side of the employer. If this is a large company, then applicants will send bids for hiring. And to look through each new file (or not a file) is annoying. Therefore, at the very beginning of the summary should be indicated all the most weighty: projects that have been implemented; technologies you own; Languages ​​(programming-non-programming) - everything that you consider necessary, and most importantly, that it should be written thesis. All this is necessary for HR `s, which are often looking for certain fad, because it is they who often view the application form.
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But in addition to HR'ov, should indicate the information for other people who may potentially be interested in you. In particular, these are interviewers - those people who will interview you. After the main part, just below, it is worthwhile to write information that is oriented directly to them. For these people it is worth writing less formally. For example, if you have a research paper, then it would be quite cool for yourself to indicate the results obtained. No need to write 3 volumes of "War and Peace". But 1-2-3 sentences can be uttered. If this is a project, no one is interested in the name of this task, it is much more interesting to understand what is inside. Therefore cost to reveal the key points. List the books that you read (both professional and not). Of course, you should not list the entire school curriculum. In all you need to know when to stop. And again, you can flavor it with some impressions received from the book. Where the best option would be to specify a link to a bookshelf, for example, goodreads.ru .

Similarly, it would be nice to do with StackOverFlow (a high-quality account can play a very beautiful game). To be able to correctly ask questions and to answer them no less correctly is an excellent skill that is very much appreciated.

Of course, do not forget to attach information about the repository with your source code.

2. A cover letter .

If the main course of your resume is ready, then you can make a “side dish” the accompanying text to it. Why do this? When you send a letter, the first thing that a person sees is the text in that letter. Lonely fixed file does not look very good. It is better to indicate what you would like to do, then in what you see your strengths. This will dilute the coldness of the attached file. Even if the accompanying text will repeat the summary, do not worry. Porridge butter will not spoil.

Be sure to specify the topic. It is better to do this so that it stands out in the list of incoming messages. Besides the fact that it is more likely to save your email from falling into spam, in addition, it will be noticed much faster.

Before sending a letter, it is best to find the person who deals with personnel, his name and surname. After which it is necessary to indicate in the letter, or in the title it is them. Again, this is necessary so that the letter is less likely to be spammed. Plus, to raise karma.

3. Search for companies .

Perhaps this is the most difficult part for many. First, you need to send shortcuts and call all, even in the most unsightly places. Here, people often have a “if”. But how can I call unclear where? It is very simple. You take the phone, find the subscriber's number on the site, and then, with a slight movement of your hand, dial the keys on your device and press "Call". Usually the girl or the man answers (exceptions so far have not been). After that, you need to confidently express your intentions: “I am looking for a job like this. I would like to do so and so. "

From time to time there are very good companies with excellent job opportunities. Sometimes, the right to ask a question about a non-existing vacancy causes some embarrassment on the part of the person on the other end of the line. But even if the conversation did not work out, do not bother yourself with any nonsense. You have not even seen this person live. And hardly ever see. So everything is fine. If absolutely big cockroaches about this, then for such purposes you can buy a separate SIM card so that no one will track you down. But global surveillance is not developed so much, so you should not worry.

Not all companies post active vacancies. Sometimes they just haven't done it yet. There was a case when I came to an interview for a vacancy of a C ++ programmer, in the process it turned out that this position appeared just a couple of days ago. And the CEO was in some confusion: how did I know about the recruitment of employees for this job !?

Once I accidentally (mixed up the letter in the site address) and came across a company that manufactures railway equipment and rails. I called there. It turned out that the head office of the company is located in Tallinn and here there is a whole department of programmers, there are open vacancies. But due to the remote location, this offer did not suit me.

The situation is similar with the sending of letters. Letters should be sent by copy-paste and almost to all the addresses of companies that came to hand. Of course, you need to remove all signs of shipment so as not to upset employers. There is one “But.” Sending must be done wisely. If possible, it should be sent to the address at which your letter will be read. In other words, you should not send a job search message to an address intended for the media. There is a pattern that often these letters are not forwarded to the addresses of the personnel department. In small companies, it is quite possible to contact the CEO or a person of a similar position. Immediately after sending, it would be very nice to duplicate this message with a bell in order to increase the chances of a response.

Where to look for companies? It's easy too.

The first way. You can monitor them for services such as HH , Moykrug and many others. We go to a similar resource, choose an ad. Go to the website of the company by reference, which, as a rule, you can find on the same page. If it was not possible to do this, you always can google it. On the website of the company, we are looking for an e-mail and phone, we begin the process of sending a message to a job .

The second way. Pull out all the companies that you have in your head. All resources. Find their sites and send resumes there in the above manner. It is important that these can be the coolest and most incredible companies: Google, Space-X — what appears in our thoughts, write there.

The third way. Everyone has interests, and try yourself in these areas. Type in the search line familiar to you phrases. You may be able to find sites for which your profile developers are potentially interested. You look, some of them may be objects that developers are interested in.

To understand how effective these methods are, I will give some statistics. During the job search, I sent out about 200 resumes. Now the reader was horrified: “A lot!” A lot, a little. If we consider that resumes are sent in large quantities, this is a very small number. Relatively speaking, sending 1 letter takes about 2 minutes: to find the site (it is better to find the stack of sites right away - faster), create a new letter, copy text there, attach a resume, insert a postal address, click the send button. 2 * 200 = 400 minutes. Those. about 6.5 hours. This is not so much, if you do this every few days for 2 hours, say.

Now, with regard to feedback from these 200-m emails. For students, about 9-10 responses to 30 letters (for people of other categories, these numbers may vary, but not too much). Of these, only 1-2 letters are relevant: an invitation to an interview or a task that needs to be solved. Thus, about 10 letters with tasks or invitations for an interview (full-time or online) come out of the 200th letters.

4. Interviewing .

When you come to the interview, it is almost impossible to imagine that they will ask you there. But the fact that you are here means that the employer is interested in you. It is unlikely that you will be invited for an interview and will ask what you do not know what you did not indicate in the resume. Well, if there will be, the interviewer will understand that you do not know this with a high probability. your ignorance will not look very strange.

When I come for an interview, I go there with the expectation of solving interesting problems or talking to each other. It is with this attitude. You should not think that something will not work out for you. From all you should get some profit. So here - you need to go with the mood to have fun. You can say that I do not like to answer questions from my uncle. But no one forces you to do this. Questions need to be treated as a task that needs to be solved. Here you can resist and say that I do not like this task! But the question arises: “What are you doing at this interview?” Why go to a job that you don’t like? You should not settle for anything and then to suffer. Or, it should be understood that you will be sad there, and you should not read such posts.

Sometimes it helps to find out who will conduct the interview. If it is a large company, then you can find out about this person some information regarding his personal qualities or questions that he likes to ask. It is very useful. Personality qualities will add you ideas about this person.

If you could not find out who is conducting the interview, then most likely it will be known in the office of the company. Again, there will be some time to google information about this person, because there is a gap between the arrival at the office and the beginning of the interview.

5. Waiting for answers .

Answers from companies does not come all at the same time. This is due to several reasons. First, it is not possible to send letters at the same time. I highly advise you not to send copies of letters. Secondly, the response period can vary from one day to several weeks. And, thirdly, the interview period can be extended for months. Moreover, the travel time is directly proportional to the materiality of the vacancy and the company. Those. the larger and more serious the company, the position, the longer it takes to go to work. In this regard, a number of problems arise here: which company to give preference to? If one company has already answered you, but not yet. I can't give a good recipe. But I adhere to the idea that you need to choose the place where you want to go and go straight to the goal, because if you are stormed in the process of achieving the goal: there will be a throwing from one vacancy to another, then you are unlikely to choose exactly what you need.

I propose to choose based on your interests. Put them at the forefront. Moreover, you should fold all those companies, the probability of falling into which is below 50%. The probability of hitting is affected by how many interviews have passed, how well they have passed on your part, the behavior of HR'a. For example, if HR constantly forgets about your candidacy, then this vacancy should not be considered as serious, even if you really want to get to this position, because at the very last moment everything can break off, but for you this will result in a great deal of frustration. But you decide, of course.

But again, among all the offers that you received, you should choose 1 and a few for the fallback. But it should be understood that spare options at a certain point may have to be abandoned due to the device’s too long process for the main offer.

It often happens that HR does not call for 5 or more days. In such cases, I believe that you need to call the personnel department and clarify the question about your candidacy. This is worth doing, because your letter could get into spam, you could be forgotten (if it happened once, then there is nothing wrong with that, but if it is permanent, then most likely it means that the company is not interested in you, or HR is extremely incompetent, less likely). There is nothing to worry about if you remind yourself, as your call will not take much time from a personnel specialist, but will only remind you that you are interested in a vacancy, and your intentions are quite serious. Of course, daily calls to the benefit are unlikely to go. But, say, to call once 5-7 days is quite normal.