The Brutal Truth About Landing a Tech Job | Ep#48
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[00:00:00] The brutal truth about landing a tech job is that learning to code is just not enough.
[00:00:05] So many people I meet, you know, they've sacrificed so much time and energy just learning to code, right? Learning to code. And then they discover to the horror that the real career change battle begins after all the tutorials. Now, in this podcast, I'm gonna talk to you about why the tech job hunt is a ruthless game, especially when you have no track record and how to actually win.
[00:00:26] I know because I went from a 37 year old lawyer to a software engineer eventually at Google
[00:00:31] because I understood and I learned the hard way.
[00:00:33] Welcome to Easier Said Than Done with me, Zubin Pratap, where I share with you the tens of thousands of dollars worth of self development that I did on my journey from 37 year old lawyer to professional software engineer. The goal of this podcast is to show you how to actually do those things that are EASIER SAID THAN DONE.
[00:00:51] Hey everybody. Zubin again here today and today what I'm gonna talk to you about, or rather I'm gonna. Walk you through is how to master the entire career change process into software engineering, not just the coding part. Okay. That's literally one of the earlier parts of it. There are many stages after that.
[00:01:05] In fact, in another episode of this, of this podcast, I talk about the seven stages to career change. It's common to all career change, but especially for code. It's very, very important that you understand that the learning to code part is like step two or something outta seven stages. Okay? Anyway, so. Why should you want to learn about the entire career change, career transition process?
[00:01:24] Well, because the dream presumably is not just to learn to code. Like
[00:01:28] if that's your goal, then you've got the wrong goal. Your goal is to actually work as a software engineer, which means you actually have to get hired and paid compared to the market
[00:01:36] and beat the market to be a software engineer. Okay?
[00:01:39] Now, the benefits of having this. End to end worldview. This complete picture is immense. You're gonna avoid this devastating cycle that so many people who come to me are stuck in, you know, the cycle of endless, endless learning to code, but not having any interviews, zero job prospects or worse, taking some real horrible dead end, semi coding kind of jobs that builds their career into nothing like it just.
[00:02:00] It's a dead end, right? And I want to save you the countless hours of wasted effort and help you significantly accelerate your path to a fulfilling and high paying, rewarding career in tech. I need to tell you, you need to plan. I. For the stage after the theory. Okay, this is really important. This, there are many stages after the theory in tutorials and toy app stage, right?
[00:02:19] You need to plan for all that. The stage that you're trying to get to is the stage where you're actually an engineer, which means you're employed in a role where you're not just coding, by the way, that's only a small part of what the software engineering job is, right?
[00:02:30] Engineering is so much more than just coding.
[00:02:32] It's so much more. Okay. And unfortunately, that is where so many mid-career folks are trying to change into software engineering, get so badly blindsided and never quite make they spend months, often years, to be honest, doing bootcamps and immersed in tutorials and, and, and personal projects.
[00:02:47] And building yet another portfolio, project and sacrifice personal time with family and. They lose time with their kids or whatever, just trying to push through all these complex concepts and they're just not prepared for what the real world is. And that's why they don't get any opportunities. No, no jobs, no success.
[00:02:59] And this can go on for months and years, like I said. Right? And it's a harsh reality. I. When you don't get a single interview and you spent eight to 12 months not being in your family or sacrificing a lot of your personal time, it's a pretty bitter pill to swallow. And all of this is because they've misunderstood that.
[00:03:13] Learning to code while a monumental and critical, unavoidable first, first step is literally the first step. The real game is the job hunt. And that's an entirely separate, and arguably, in my opinion, harder, more challenging phase of the transition because the competition is unpredictable. Whereas code is very predictable, right?
[00:03:31] If you write the same code, I write the same code, we are gonna get identical results. If you and I walk into the same job interview, we are gonna get different results, right? . And just to be clear, I'm not saying that I will succeed and you aren't.
[00:03:40] I'm saying that we will get different results. I may fail and you may succeed even if we know more or less the same things. Because that's kind of how life is in interviewing, right? And I've been hiring and interviewing for years now, and I can tell you that when you get to the top five or 10, you know, people typically, for the roles I've sort of advertised, been, you know, more than 1200 people, typically by the time you're the top five or 10.
[00:04:00] It's hard to tell the difference usually when you're that good or you've made it through that many filters. And so at that point in time, it's really not about the code. You assume the code's there because they're all that good, but how do you even get into that top 10 is, or the top five is, is the real key.
[00:04:13] And that's a whole separate campaign, right? And most people never think about that. What happens after I learn to code? They sort of just assume that there's going to be this magical moment where opportunities fall from the sky into their lap.
[00:04:24] And it's, it's not like that. Okay, so let's talk about all these reasons.
[00:04:27] Now, the primary reason, and there are five, but the primary reason why people aren't getting interviews is because the modern job market, and it's been like this for at least, 20, 25 years, is extremely efficient at connecting opportunities.
[00:04:40] So there's lots of applications, and look, this is the hard truth:
[00:04:43] job hunting, standing out, securing a recruiter's interest, and ultimately even getting hired is, in my opinion, genuinely harder than just the learning to code bit.
[00:04:53] Okay? And that's true in any industry. By the way. The actual core skill is fairly predictably achievable to a good textbook and a serious and and a well-structured curriculum, right? But in tech, it's particularly hard because it's actually not too hard to acquire the basic skills to be functional, and therefore, there is competition and it's high demand, which drives more competition and as a career changer.
[00:05:15] Without a track record, it's really hard to stand out. It requires a very specific kind of plan that's tailored to your target market and to the kind of person you are, and frankly, how much time you have.
[00:05:24] That's why in the Inner Circle program, we spend so much time understanding the individual. We spend weeks, not like two or three weeks, we're talking eight to 10 weeks.
[00:05:33] Just understanding the individual. What their life context is, what their goals are, and only then do we build a plan. Okay. Now, I want you to keep in mind from a recruiter's point of view, the application process is very hard work. I mean, even when I'm hiring, it's really hard because typically you have hundreds, like I said, sometimes more than a thousand.
[00:05:51] When I was at Google, it was thousands, right? Thousands of applications. And every role has, you know, hundreds if not thousands of applications, and you have to figure out how to get through them.
[00:06:00] So most recruiters, when they faced with that,
[00:06:02] of course they're gonna assume you know how to code. Like why else are you applying for the job?
[00:06:05] Right? That's an absolute minimum requirement. That's not enough to help you get the job. Obviously that's the ticket to the dance, the minimum requirement. It's not the qualification in itself, right? It's just the minimum. So how would that be enough to get their attention? It isn't. You are trying to break into a highly competitive field.
[00:06:22] Don't forget that.
[00:06:23] And often you're competing with armies of established and experienced coders, of which you may be the least experienced, probably with no experience if you're a career changer.
[00:06:31] And so if your strategy begins and ends with, I know how to code, well, it's fine to begin with that, but it's a problem to end with that
[00:06:39] because that means you don't know how the job market works.
[00:06:42] Just like knowing how to play basketball. It is not enough to be in the NBA. Knowing how to play the guitar is not enough to be a rock star
[00:06:47] , right? Knowing how to code is not enough to be a software engineer, and so if you've never been on the hiring side, then I understand that this may be news to you, which is why I do these podcasts.
[00:06:55] And frankly, not knowing something is exactly why it becomes really important to know how things actually work,
[00:07:01] because if you don't know something, then you're flying blind. It's your responsibility to find out how the world actually works.
[00:07:06] And so that's why I started the Inner Circle Mentorship program five years ago, and that's why this podcast started a year ago to try and get most of you to understand that it's not how people talk about it in TikTok, the real world.
[00:07:15] From the insider perspective. You can only learn about something from someone who's doing the thing you're trying to do, not from someone who talks about that thing. For someone who's actually doing it right now, I do have some bad news. Because I said learning to code is not enough, right? And hopefully by now you really understand that.
[00:07:30] Hi, if you want a no BS insight into how to change your career, whether to code or something else and how to actually get job opportunities in tech, then please subscribe and like.
[00:07:38] It's no BS because I have zero incentive to mislead you. I just want to help you and give you tons of value so that you will consider working with me to get to your next career.
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[00:08:01] Oh, and please follow me on LinkedIn too. I pretty much post there every single day. Just look for my name, Zubin Pratap. All right. So please like, and subscribe to this channel and let's get back to the episode.
[00:08:08] now, I do have some bad news. Because I said learning to code is not enough, right? And hopefully by now you really understand that.
[00:08:15] But there are actually, in my opinion, four other critical reasons why aspiring coders struggle to make actionable, measurable, tangible progress in their career change to code. So
[00:08:25] reason number one, I call it the curse of competition
[00:08:28] , right? Unless you know how to play, in which case you'll beat it. But here's the question I want you guys to reflect on.
[00:08:33] Even if you are visible, right? You have some sort of public persona and you've learned to code,
[00:08:37] how are you going to outcompete established software engineers with years of a real world track record in software engineering and probably they have formal qualifications and professional experience when you don't?
[00:08:50] Now you may think,
[00:08:52] oh, I have transferable skills.
[00:08:53] That's not true. The core skill is engineering. They have more of that. You may have transferable skills they don't, but that doesn't matter as much as the core skill.
[00:08:58] That's the first thing. The transferable skill is icing on the cake. Now, you may say, oh, but maybe there's a hiring manager out there that's, you know, going to take a chance at me.
[00:09:06] Look, hiring managers have bosses and they have HR and they have finance and other people to, to sort of explain themselves to, and hiring managers have a job to do. They have a team to run.
[00:09:16] It's extremely risky for a hiring manager to just take a chance on someone.
[00:09:20] So imagine you. What would you do in the same situation?
[00:09:24] Forget about even coding. Imagine you needed urgent car repairs, right?
[00:09:28] Would you choose someone who just learned off YouTube and finished a six months, mechanics course online, or, or would you choose someone with a few years of hands-on experience and a strong reputation?
[00:09:37] What would you do?
[00:09:38] Right? Even if the person who is learning off YouTube, maybe they know more than enough to get the job done. Right. Maybe they're plenty knowledgeable, got the right skills, but they have no track record and yours are the first car they're gonna work on. Ooh, that feels riskier, right? So you do the same thing.
[00:09:53] You would naturally prefer people with more experience. So for a hiring manager, and it's important for you to remember the risk factor because we're gonna talk about it later. For a hiring manager bringing on a career changer, which means zero real world engineering experience. Well, that's super risky.
[00:10:07] And so they're gonna assume that the experienced candidate will deliver results probably more fast and more reliably, and with less oversight, more less management time, which minimizes the manager's risk, right?
[00:10:19] So you're kind of fighting an uphill battle already compared to other qualified engineers. When you're a career changer, that's already just a factor of life, right? Unless you understand how to level that playing field. I.
[00:10:28] Now, reason number two is what I call the interview iceberg. Most people just focus on the tip of the iceberg, right?
[00:10:34] And so they think, oh, this, you know, a coding interview is doing some leetcode or DSA stuff, and I can. I can hands in heart tell you about, you know, 70% of coding or technical interviews out there do not include DSA type problems. Okay? I know my first, all four roles, all four, first offers that I got did not actually need DSA because there were smaller companies, they didn't need to have that kind of filter.
[00:10:54] Again, I've talked about this in other episodes, which companies typically use DSA when? DSA. Why? DSA. What kind of filter it is, how to prepare, you know, all of that. 'cause I had to do that for Google.
[00:11:02] And how I prepared for Google is completely different from any other job I've had before that in code
[00:11:08] .
[00:11:08] Similar to how I did for some, but I had to change my preparation strategy based on the company and based on the hiring practices.
[00:11:13] Like you have to do that, you have to know the target company, right? So. Interview iceberg. So even if you manage to land an interview,
[00:11:20] most aspiring developers in career changes are completely unprepared for the type of tech interview that it is. Okay. They're not even aware, like I've counted personally 9 to 14 different types of coding interviews in tech.
[00:11:31] And you know, it's unclear now because there are some hybrid types, especially with AI coming out and all that. Right. And so. Let's say 10. Okay. Almost a dozen different types of coding interviews, give or take, and code is just the starting point. So if you're not sure what kind of interview you're gonna do.
[00:11:46] You're kind of flying blind, right? How are you gonna prepare?
[00:11:48] So you could land up to a game and you know, it looks like everyone's carrying a racket and you, you turn up to the game and you think it's badminton, but it's ra, it's tennis or the other way around. Or you, you'll, you, that you hear about a bat in a ball and you turn up for a cricket game and it's actually baseball, right?
[00:12:02] It's not gonna help. So you, you gotta understand that most interviews aren't just about dec coding. One round maybe about the coding. But remember, interviews in, especially in tech are multiple rounds. Like most of the roles that I've been in in tech have required at least six rounds. And that's typically because I've been in, in the big tech sector.
[00:12:18] But if you go to the smaller places, it may be as many as three or four rounds, right? Of which one, maybe two are the technical ones, you know? So you've gotta know each of the interviews, and each interview process has many rounds and need to prepare for each round specifically, right? So. In a professional context, it's not just about solving some complex obscure DSA problem.
[00:12:35] It's about solving problems in a team setting, which includes communicating your thought process, navigating behavioral questions that probe into your history and problem solving approach demonstrated in your past. A lot of people make mistakes on this, and so when I train people in the inner circle, I'm very particular about this.
[00:12:51] There is a way to answer behavioral questions, and it's not meant to be hypothetical, okay? So you need to be really well prepared for this kinda stuff because it doesn't matter how well you do the technical interview, if you show you're pretty poor on the, on the behavioral stuff, you're not gonna be a fit, right?
[00:13:04] So therefore you, you even need to understand other non-technical concepts. And then there are sort of technical concepts like system design, but that aren't about code, it's about design and engineering.
[00:13:13] This is what the difference between coding and engineering is.
[00:13:15] And at Google for example, when I was interviewing, they call me back for a second system design interview because they use system design as a way to figure your level.
[00:13:23] Hey, hope you're enjoying this episode. Listen, I bet you're tired of the social media BS. You're confused and overwhelmed. And all you want is for someone to just show you a clear path to a coding career. Right? We get it. My partner, Brian and I. We changed to code in our thirties and we can help you do it too.
[00:13:41] Brian and I have done all sorts of engineering work from startups to Google, and now we've built an exclusive private mentorship program designed to get you from beginner to professional developer, whether you've done a coding bootcamp, you have a computer science degree, or you're starting from zero, it doesn't matter.
[00:13:55] We'll build you a step by step and customized plan not just for the coding stuff, but for the entire career change process Look, i'll be honest. The program is not easy and it's not short But if you do the work, you'll get results that will change your life If that's what you want go to parsity. io slash inner- circle or find any of the links in the show notes And you can schedule a free call with us speak to you there
[00:14:18] And at Google for example, when I was interviewing, they call me back for a second system design interview because they use system design as a way to figure your level. So they wanted to up level me, right? Because my first system design interview gave them the signal that maybe I was at a higher level than they thought I was at first.
[00:14:33] Wasn't the coding round, it was the system design round that they used to level me.
[00:14:36] Right? So all of this stuff is stuff that prior coders have no experience and knowledge about.
[00:14:40] So when you get a coding interview, most people just get excited. They get anxious, they just prepare a few things, but they don't know how to prepare for it because they haven't done the due diligence. And in the Inner Circle program, you spend a lot of time training our students about, 'cause you know, there's so few students that we have, you can spend a lot of time with them.
[00:14:55] Just saying, okay, this is how you find out what to do for this interview. This is how you speak to the recruiter. These are the questions you ask. This is what these answers mean. This is what the hidden pitfalls are. This is what the opportunities are, all of that. Right?
[00:15:06] Okay. Now, reason number three, why a lot of people struggle with this change is that they follow this pre and ray, I beg your pardon? The spray and pray fallacy. Right. And so what that means is they sort of believe that, okay,
[00:15:17] if I just keep hitting that apply button and apply to hundreds of jobs indiscriminately, Eventually I'm going land something, right?
[00:15:23] Well, no. Or if you land something, it'll be something that puts you in a career cul-de-sac, right?
[00:15:28] A dead end road. Because you have to be intentional about your job.
[00:15:31] Guys, you're not 20 something. If you're a career changer, you're probably not in your early twenties. Maybe you're in your late twenties, but most of the people who come to me are in their thirties, right?
[00:15:38] You cannot afford to do the , spray and pray thing.
[00:15:40] You don't wanna start off at the very bottom if you can help it,
[00:15:43] you wanna start off slightly higher than the very bottom. You don't wanna be competing directly with a with a fresh grad
[00:15:48] , right?
[00:15:48] And, but the spray and pray thing will force you to do that. You have to be extremely intentional, extremely targeted, know where you want to try and come in.
[00:15:55] And that means. Research. So it's better to apply for 20 really good quality jobs than to apply indiscriminately for 200. It just is. Okay. Now, without targeted applications, very well, thought out, resumes and a genuine understanding of the target company's needs, your efforts are gonna be diluted and frankly pointless.
[00:16:11] And your application is very easily dismissed. I cannot begin to emphasize to you, unless you've been on the other side.
[00:16:17] Just imagine for a moment, somebody put. 200 applications on your desk. Okay.
[00:16:21] That'll be about a pile this high. Okay. And you've got a full-time job. 'cause it's not like somebody's saying, don't do your job while you're doing the hiring stuff.
[00:16:29] You've gotta manage all of that and you've gotta read these applications. Just time, how much it takes to read. You know what just time, how much it takes to read your resume. Okay? And now multiply that by 200 and see how hard it is to actually review resumes.
[00:16:41] Okay? So the more you spray and pray, the worse you're making for yourself, for the recruiter, et cetera.
[00:16:45] Look, just think about it this way. There's a reason why a premium brand like Apple. It does not do these letterbox drops or stand at the corner of busy streets and hand out flyers.
[00:16:54] Okay? Because it's a horrible way to sell.
[00:16:56] It's a non-prem way to sell.
[00:16:57] That mass applying that people do is kind of like handing out flyers on High Street, right? When you follow a, a strategy to approach the market, think about what a premium brand would do.
[00:17:07] Like for example, Apple sells with something similar to what's known as reputational selling and, and that's also what I teach in the Inner Circle program, right?
[00:17:13] You want your reputation to be the drawcard,
[00:17:15] not your application.
[00:17:17] Okay? Reason number four, people struggle a lot is a lack of strategic deliberate thinking around the career change process.
[00:17:24] Okay? Now. I changed careers after 15 years as a lawyer. Okay. I was in my late thirties.
[00:17:29] And when I did so from a law of software engineering at Google, for example, it wasn't a simple pivot.
[00:17:33] It was a systematic, very strategic, multi-year process and campaign.
[00:17:40] Okay? It's a strategic campaign and that's, those are deliberate words that I'm using.
[00:17:43] Many folks try and do this tactically in a hurry without understanding or using data from the market to inform their strategic planning. And maybe they don't know and they don't know how understandable.
[00:17:54] But then
[00:17:54] when you don't know how, and you assume that your method is likely to work because you saw it on a 30-second TikTok, that is kind of pure hope.
[00:18:01] And hope is not a strategy. Or worse, you'll end up taking any job.
[00:18:04] Just a leap into, you know, something that you got it to say, oh, I'm an I'm developer, and you get no skills, or you're working in a stack or in an environment that does not build you at all and or you, you know, you get stuck and drawn into some semi paid or unpaid internship
[00:18:16] that's basically nothing more than free labor factories. Then what you're kind of doing is navigating by reaction and you're losing time and the opportunity cost what you could have done with that time, and that energy is huge. You could have learned more, better things. You could have had a better relationship with somebody else that led to something else.
[00:18:33] Because time never comes back
[00:18:34] you have to be very strategic, right, about how you use it, which means you need to have a clear roadmap because a roadmap tells you. Ignore everything else. Ignore every other path, path because all of those are a waste of time, right?
[00:18:44] So you need a clear roadmap from multiple campaigns, your networking campaign, your strategic campaign around what skills to acquire, how much of that to do, what not to acquire, what to ignore you know, which, which events matter, which events don't matter,
[00:18:57] which interview types matter, which interview types don't matter, which type of companies are right for your long-term goals, which type of companies are fit for your background, all of that.
[00:19:03] And you gotta do all this without coming across as being completely risky to the hiring manager's point of view. Right. So it, it takes a lot of deliberate effort.
[00:19:11] When I break it down, like so it sounds hard because you suddenly realize, oh gosh, there are all these pieces to the puzzle.
[00:19:16] But that's true. When you take apart, even something as simple as this remote control, right? Like there's a lot of pieces in there. It looks pretty simple and straightforward, but there are lots of pieces in there. It's, it's the same principle, but once you have the blueprint, then taking it apart and putting it back is suddenly no big deal.
[00:19:30] Right. Once you have the instructions, it's like IKEA furniture without instructions. You, you're like, what the hell are all these pieces? But if someone gives you the instruction booklet, even if it's badly written,
[00:19:38] you've just gotta follow , the, the dotted line, so to speak, or the pictures and you'll get there.
[00:19:41] Right? It's the same thing with career change Now. Remember
[00:19:44] your big problem, or the big thing that you're gonna face is that a lot of your learning and struggling and reading will go to waste if you don't have the right strategy.
[00:19:51] So I always want you to be thinking in the back of my mind that this choice could be a very wasteful choice if it's not the right choice.
[00:19:57] Okay? And so
[00:19:59] without the right plan and strategic thinking, you will waste a ton of time, very dangerous, because time is the one thing you cannot waste when you're changing careers. Why?
[00:20:06] ' Cause you're already late to the game .
[00:20:09] Now obviously it's possible. Even though you're late to the game,
[00:20:12] you've seen the evidence of a handful of people, including, for example, me right, who've overcome these problems. And I'm not the only one. There are a few others, not a ton, but a few others.
[00:20:19] So it's clearly possible.
[00:20:20] Now the question is how. Well, how is by
[00:20:23] understanding that there are clear rules to the labor market, not just in coding, in every labor market, in every country.
[00:20:28] Every city is actually a little bit different, but there are rules to the labor market. And so there are techniques and strategies because
[00:20:33] where there are rules, there are techniques and strategies that'll help you navigate those rules,
[00:20:38] okay?
[00:20:38] And that's what will help you going from just being a passionate, keen learner to actually being gainfully employed as a software engineer, which is the goal. Okay? Now let me
[00:20:46] you what I would consider to be.
[00:20:48] A three step guide, right?
[00:20:49] A three steps to help you at a meta level understand how to do the career change thing.
[00:20:54] Okay? Kind of a navigational guide.
[00:20:56] First one is you have to de-risk yourself.
[00:20:59] You have to show the hiring manager why you are the safer bet or the safest bet, or at least as safe a bet, as your competition, despite your non-technical background.
[00:21:08] So it's absolutely critical for you to understand that your goal is to not just prove that you can code.
[00:21:12] They're gonna take that for granted,
[00:21:14] but to de-risk yourself, compared to established engineers. Really think about that.
[00:21:19] Okay. Now, since not all skills are transferable, we talked about this, or you know, even if they're transferable, they're not the main reason why you get hired and they may not be immediately relevant to software engineering.
[00:21:28] So, de-risking requires a very deep understanding of what the hiring manager is looking for beyond just a coding ability. It just because you have skills that you consider to be valuable doesn't mean the hiring manager does. You need to find the clues in every stage of the job. Interview process, which is why I say interviewing is not just the actual interview, but the process,
[00:21:46] the loop, as we call it, of the interview process, is where all the clues come up, right? And it starts from the job hunt stage, right? Even from the job description, there are clues if you know how to look for them, which will then guide your initial outreach and then your next step and your next step after that.
[00:22:00] The best candidates have mastered being able to match what the business is desperate for, with their unique skills,
[00:22:06] and then showcasing those skills to say, Hey, this is what you want. Here's a fit, here's a match, right? And bring the skills front and center, because that's what has resonance to the hiring manager.
[00:22:15] For example, if a job description emphasizes scalable systems, right? You see this a lot, or customer empathy or whatever it is, right? Don't just list that you've done a project. Explain how your project was planned, designed and engineered to demonstrate scalability, or at least consider scalability, even if it is not actually a scalable project or it's a toy project, show that you've thought about it or how in your previous career, which demanded maybe a deep customer understanding of customer centricity, you know.
[00:22:42] You brought those skills. So for example Sarah, right? One of the students, you know, was a former supply chain manager, wanted to be a data analyst and instead of just showing off SQL S.Q.L. projects, she analyzed job descriptions carefully with our help
[00:22:56] to find companies desperate for efficiency and process improvement in ordering processes.
[00:23:01] Okay, so she then tailored her project narratives and her conversations with the recruiters to show how her previous experience as manager as of the supply chain combined with the data, analytical skills directly translate into identifying and solving bottlenecks in the business, which are the same kind of problem she'd experienced in a previous role, and now she's applying code to solve that.
[00:23:20] That's how she
[00:23:21] de-risked herself by making herself unique and using the transferable experience, which is relevant to the hiring manager so that proved undeniably that she would be a great person for the job 'cause she had deep insight into their problems.
[00:23:32] Okay, step two is you wanna try and master the unseen invisible job market.
[00:23:37] Okay? Now I want you guys to understand this. I. There is no clear statistic on this because you'll see why it's a problem of silent data, but recruiters estimate that
[00:23:45] somewhere between 30 and 60% of jobs are never advertised.
[00:23:49] Jobs available just get filled by, Hey, I know someone I've picked up the phone, and they filled it before it ever got listed or internally in the company.
[00:23:56] People move around and so it never got listed. Okay, so there's a lot of invisible job market going on, which means
[00:24:02] you need to stop blindly applying and mass applying and start strategically building relationships.
[00:24:07] And that's a long process. Now,
[00:24:08] we do that every day, every week, every month in the Inner Circle program because we don't know when the opportunities are gonna come.
[00:24:15] All we know is that luck is when opportunity means preparation, so we can control the preparation piece. The opportunity piece is a function of time and awareness of what's going on in the target market. Okay? Now here's why so many aspiring coders go so wrong.
[00:24:29] They focus entirely and solely on online job boards and hitting that apply button, smashing it at countless times, and then wondering why they hear nothing back.
[00:24:38] Okay? It's because. When you put that much volume into the system, the system develops stronger and stronger filters to filter out the noise. Okay? This spray and pray approach is a mistake.
[00:24:47] It causes too many applications to enter the system that then forces the recruiters to use more stringent filtering tools.
[00:24:54] Okay?
[00:24:54] That mass application methodology is why recruiters have to use more filters. 'cause there're too many people applying, right?
[00:25:01] Even those who don't actually have the skills to apply right in that environment. It's gonna be harder for you to stand out in the noise. So don't try and do where the go.
[00:25:09] Don't try and go where the crowd is going, right? You have to make it past the filter, right?
[00:25:14] If there's a bouncer at a nightclub and there's a huge line outside, you don't wanna stand in that line because by the time it's 2:00 AM and you're ready to go home, you probably haven't made it to the door.
[00:25:23] You need to find the other way in.
[00:25:25] Okay, through the relationships that you build and so on and so forth. Okay, so to avoid this crowd, you need to understand and leverage the hidden job market. First and foremost, know that it exists. We know that it's constantly being changed over, and fresh opportunities come up, which means you need an active and a structured, and a tailored networking strategy, a tailored informational interview strategy.
[00:25:45] You need to be able to identify companies in your area where your specific background could be an asset. Of course, it's gonna take research, of course it's gonna take effort.
[00:25:52] But hey,
[00:25:53] you didn't think career change was gonna be easy, did you?
[00:25:55] So don't just apply. Connect with people, okay? Reach out to engineers and recruiters on LinkedIn, but don't just be generic.
[00:26:02] Don't just say, Hey, can you help me and gimme advice. Nobody has time for that. Instead, reach out and we teach this in Inner Circle program. Reach out with meaningful messages that
[00:26:09] signal you as a high value person in the job market, but also doesn't ask for anything, right? Because you're first earning the right to even be connected with,
[00:26:18] so that can, you know, it often helps a lot to just attend virtual meetups to show your face around so you become familiar, you become a known person, and then engage meaningfully with the people who are already doing what you want to do.
[00:26:29] It's easier to say in words and it's hard to concretize, which is why I keep telling people don't ask for tips. A lot of the things that really work, take practice and skill and some sort of apprenticeship or mentorship so that you can be coached into it, right? Which is why I don't do the standard video course thing because nine out 10 people are not gonna get a lot of value out of it.
[00:26:46] 'cause you can just Google that, right? The real value comes in the customization to you and your environment. Okay? So
[00:26:52] the trick here is to get noticed before you need the job. Well, before you need the job, get noticed. Well before.
[00:26:56] By being proactive, by strategically engaging, this dramatically increases your visibility, your recall ability,
[00:27:02] your reputation, and therefore your desirable already, and will often allow you to bypass the initial screening filters that so many people get trapped in.
[00:27:09] Now step three. The final one is that you have to transform yourself, not just into a coder, but into a viable candidate that's interview ready, which means you need to bridge the gap from learner to very hireable professional.
[00:27:21] And that's a bit of a jump. Okay? So in this final step, what I want you to think about is that you need to motivate yourself. Or find somebody who will keep you accountable by realizing that
[00:27:29] the end of the learning phase isn't just the end of something, it's the start of a truly rewarding new career,
[00:27:36] if you can make that jump, okay, and because people have made it and people make that jump every day, therefore it's possible.
[00:27:41] It's not impossible. Now the only question is how .
[00:27:44] Okay, so this step of making that leap and the others before it are all laddering up to ensure that you don't just know how to code. You're not just not just one of the millions of people who've learned how to code but didn't get hired for it. You know how to be a software engineer.
[00:27:56] You've gotta be the thing that you're trying to be next as a professional, okay? You cannot get hired as an engineer
[00:28:00] if you aren't already acting and being like one and running your life like one.
[00:28:05] This means that your technical skills are just one piece of the puzzle, okay?
[00:28:08] You need to develop a a meaningful and winning interview strategy that makes you hireable.
[00:28:13] That makes you winnable. And that covers not just the technical problem solving, of course you need that, but also the behavioral stuff, the communication stuff, understanding cross-functional collaboration in, in corporate structures, and even how to demonstrate your learning agility and cultural fit to that team.
[00:28:26] Which means you need to ask good questions and if you don't come from a CA corporate background, you are at a slight disadvantage, but it's a learnable skill, right?
[00:28:32] Someone with a corporate background can explain to you what things mean, how to approach these situations. Heck, there are people that, in my team that have been around for 10 years, and I still mentor them regularly on how to navigate the corporate workplace and how to do good work, be seen to be doing good work, and manage a career for the long term.
[00:28:47] Okay? '
[00:28:47] Cause nobody cares about the job, guys. The job can come, the job can go, layoffs can happen. We've all been, I mean, most people I know have been laid off. I've been laid off.
[00:28:54] You, you stop worrying about the layoffs when you know that this is about a long-term career and you build a career, not just the next job, which is what we teach people to do in the Inner Circle program.
[00:29:02] That's why we talk about a career transition, not just a job transition. Okay?
[00:29:06] Now, in the Inner Circle, we also pretty much convert every learning exercise that we do, more or less into interview practice, right? We take every opportunity, just pretend it's an interview. And so we train our mentees to articulate their thought processes correctly out loud.
[00:29:19] Which, you know, sort of is a constant simulation of what real interview scenarios are like. And then we constantly give them feedback on their recordings, on the techniques, on the tonality, on response structures, on the examples they use in the behavioral questions. Everything really, because Brian and I, we've been both successful candidates in our tech careers and hiring managers, and we've done the career change thing
[00:29:37] in our thirties, which all of these are not the easiest things to do as you can appreciate, right?
[00:29:41] So we have this holistic approach and we bring that holistic approach to prepare our students so that we empower our students to
[00:29:46] confidently navigate all sorts of interview challenges and repeatedly demonstrate, DEMONSTRATE that they're not just a coder, but a valuable asset
[00:29:54] to the team
[00:29:55] and they're ready to contribute meaningfully from day one. So you're not a liability, you're an asset. Okay.
[00:30:00] Now I know this is getting on a bit, so let me quickly recap what we've talked about today. We've discussed why career changers often struggle to land actual coding jobs, and we kind of boil it down to four main reasons, right?
[00:30:10] Reason #1 is you're up against very experienced engineers.
[00:30:14] And you know, you need a strategy to level the playing field, or at least compare favorably with them in the eyes of the hiring manager.
[00:30:19] Reason #2 is that interviews are complex and diverse. There are 9 to 14 different types
[00:30:24] that I've counted in the tech world so far, and they go.
[00:30:27] Well beyond just the coding and solving some problem, or, you know, doing some React app or, you know, a DSA question or something. They require proper preparation for each of those different types, those nine, 14 different types of interviews. Each of them require different preparation strategy.
[00:30:39] Reason #3, the spray and pray approach helps
[00:30:41] no one. Fact, it, it doesn't just suck.
[00:30:43] It actually makes it worse for you. Okay? Mass applying to jobs without a clear targeted strategy and an intentionality is pointless and arguably even counterproductive.
[00:30:53] Reason #4 is that zero strategy means that you are flying completely blind, which is as good as guessing,
[00:30:59] and therefore that dramatically reduces your odds because a successful career change is a time expensive thing and you don't have time to lose when you're already.
[00:31:08] Mid-career, right? So it requires a deliberate and, and a strategic and intentional campaign tailored to you and your tar and your target market, your goals. So it's not just, it's not saying that you know, you, you just do A, B, C. There's no formula, but there is a route, okay? There's no formula to get London, but there is a route.
[00:31:25] If you're north of London, you have to go south. If you're Eastern London, you have to go west. Okay,
[00:31:28] so no two maps will work for the same people, so it has to be boiled down to you
[00:31:32] which is kind of why I did the customized coaching and the mentorship program anyway, right? So it's not enough to just learn a little and apply a lot.
[00:31:38] You've gotta learn a fair bit and then you've gotta have the right plan, the right roadmap, so you just had to follow along.
[00:31:44] Now at a high level, I also outlined for you in this episode three steps that will help you succeed.
[00:31:48] One is de-risk yourself in the eyes of the hiring manager. Show them that at the very least, you're not an unsafe bet, which is how you appear as a career changer.
[00:31:55] Okay? And remember, transferable skills are not as great as you think they are. They only the icing on the cake if it matters to the chef. Okay? Not all icing is is relevant to the chef, okay?
[00:32:04] Not all transferable skills are relevant to the hiring company, and it won't count for diddly squat if you don't actually
[00:32:10] have strong coding skills, at least equivalent to the competition.
[00:32:12] Okay? Because after all, coding is the core skill, right? And that's not something you have a track record in at the time when you're applying as a career changer. Okay? Step two is understand that
[00:32:20] there is an entire hidden labor market out there. The "informal" job market.
[00:32:23] Leverage it.
[00:32:24] Leverage it, master it through active relationship building and strategic engagement with the right people at the right hub and spoke strategies. Okay? Step three is you need to transform yourself, not just into someone who's learned to code, but someone who's a an engineering ready candidate, an interview ready candidate, okay?
[00:32:41] You've gotta
[00:32:41] develop and practice the winning interview strategies for that type of interview that works for you, and that demonstrates to the hiring manager that you're an engineer, not just a coder.
[00:32:50] Okay? So remember guys, you have to master the entire career change process. Not just the coding bit, because that is what career change is about, is your career change is only successful,
[00:33:01] not when you've learned to code your career.
[00:33:02] Change is successful
[00:33:03] when you've got the job offer. That's the winning point.
[00:33:06] Okay? So if you're serious about accelerating your journey. And you want a proven roadmap, one that's customized to you, that cuts through all the noise and the social media bs and you wanna build a long-term meaningful career,
[00:33:17] not just the next job.
[00:33:18] You want a career that gives you joy and meaning, financial comfort, opportunity. Then by all means check out the Inner Circle program and also my free new newsletter links are in the description. Okay, cool. I'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye.
[00:33:30] Just subscribe, you know you gotta do it.
[00:33:32]
