Ask HN: How to very quickly land a job/gig with your current skills?

>In my career lifetime as a software engineer, I worked for five different companies in my career lifetime. These jobs lasted from 3 months to 2 years, with a few periods of no work in between, also lasting anywhere from a few months to a few years.

It sounds like your employment history might be a little bit streaky. Nothing that is insurmountable, but it might be worth having someone look at your resume you are portraying your experience in the best light possible.

>What things can I do for my peers that would help out the situation? I have the experience, but none of my colleagues really comes forward to me to ask me if I'm looking for work. I'm always the first one to ask.

Maybe buy them a beer or just tell them that you are looking. At this point they either trust you and want to help or they don't. The time to build those relationships are before you need them. This doesn't mean that you need to be best pals, but at this point you just have to ask and see if they will help you out. Most people like to pay it forward so you'll be surprised how much help is out there.

I regularly message/email my group of contacts asking about job openings, but they always say some form of "sorry, I don't know of anything right now" every time. Could be just a lot of bad luck and timing, I guess?

Buying someone a drink becomes surprisingly hard to do with only $48 in the bank. Some of them I can't meet locally, also, because they have moved out of state.

Are you working with any recruiters? They can both help you polish your resume and get the attention of hiring managers. They may even be able to coach you on interviewing, if that's where you're having trouble. If you're job hunting full-time, work with around 3-5 recruiters at a time. (If you're just looking on the side, stick to 1-2.)

I know recruiters have a bad rep, but they're not all spammers. The good ones, who develop real relationships with both candidates and hiring managers, can be very effective.

In the meantime, maybe you could get some contract work through something like Toptal? (They set a decent rate floor; whereas I'd suggest avoiding Upwork and the like.)

Since it sounds like you're in a cash crunch, another option to consider for quick cash might be TaskRabbit or even, yes, fast food.

I can really relate with your situation. I have been through such a phase in my life and I know it's pretty depressing and challenging.

Job is something which you either have it or don't.It's kind of binary. And so there is only one solution to this problem - to find out a job.

Searching and interviewing for job is usually one of the most toughest time of a person's life. This is especially true if you have been searching for 6+ months or have not been selected in 10+ places.

The only way for you to overcome this situation is by hustling. Every morning you need to begin your day with full energy and start looking out for a job and forgetting everything about your past failure's.

You need to continuously keep on trying till you succeed.

You'll have to do a lot of stuff to land a good job such as - read books, practice programming, network with people, refine your profile etc.

And let me tell you that no one will be able to do this on your behalf. It's your fight and you'll have to fight yourself and win it.

All the best.

Have you tried https://leetcode.com or some of the interview prep sites like https://www.interviewcake.com ? Also with such little funds left (not judging, I'm in a similar situation myself) have you tried doing some less-than-awesome work on Upwork or Toptal?

Does your Github profile show your quality of work? I get a lot of job offers based purely on my Github profile, although I'm currently trying to launch a startup so I'm not accepting many.

What are your most marketable skills? Are you willing to learn new skills? It seems that ReactJS is in high demand, even if the framework is a bit funky IMO

I am not sure how Leetcode would help out here in specific, for someone who already has years of proven programming experience with other companies. Any company who holds any water in what they do would substitute rote knowledge of algorithms with real world programming skills.

Leetcode is used by many companies for interviews and whiteboards. For example when I interviewed at Facebook the first screening problems were from the site and the later whiteboard problems for the on-site interview were as well.

I have no experience working with software "at scale" so it may be that my interviewing experiences are different from yours. Generally speaking, though, software developers at non-tech companies, or at agencies for small-med business clients (what I tend to work for) don't ask those kinds of technical questions.

Do you mind linking your github profile so people can see what to aspire to as regards their github profile.

Getting a job is pretty straightforward.

1 - You need to be able to actually do the job

2 - You need to communicate well that you're able to do the job

I'd print out your CV and read it carefully 5 or 10 times, then I'd rewrite it eliminating unnecessary words paying attention to easy mistakes like.

> my career lifetime as a software engineer, I worked for five different companies in my career lifetime

I'd then move to your personal website and be critical about it, is it really showcasing the best work I've done?

Then I'd pick 5 of the best places you'd like to work for, find the exact position you'd like and follow the people that currently hold that position on twitter and also follow their managers who will be interviewing you.

I'd then make a list of all side projects this people are working on and analyse it carefully, is there anything there that you can't do? If yes, then I'd learn it and post on your site.

If no, then I'd create a side project to impress them all, ship it and post on your site.

When you get the phone call, I'd answer all questions precisely and without hesitation, and I'd try to correlate with something you have worked/done before.

I'd ask if that answers well or if I should keep going, and I'd definitely have a set of relevant questions to ask the interview.

More importantly, I'd think hard about the reasons I'm not getting a second interview. Only you know that and you can fix that.

> What things can I do for them that would help out the situation?

You can grab a coffee with them but you can't come across as desperate.

You can email them telling you're looking for new opportunities and ask if they know of any openings.

Then analyse carefully their responses and take it from there.

Don't be hard on yourself, get to work on a side project, create something that works and showcase your skills.

Saying it's straightforward is not the same as easy. Step 2 is definitely not second nature to me since communicating well on the job is different from communicating your skills well on an interview. I can do the former just fine, but not the latter.

Personal website:

This is something I don't have at the moment, though I don't quite agree it's truly necessary because the majority of programmers don't have/need one. So I could just aim to be like them. Since they "clock out" their mind after 5 every day not thinking about code and still be able to hold a career, then having a website seems irrelevant. They're able to hold a career by doing less than the recommended.

Projects:

I already have several on Github, some that have impressed bigger companies like Cloudflare and Coinbase and prompted them to give me an interview.

When I prepare for an interview I don't really do grinding for technical questions, or review things on a sheet of paper. I like to wing it and give it my honest try, because my mind is clearest when I don't have to consciously think of any body language or verbal cues over the phone.

Grabbing a coffee with people:

A lot of my colleagues live out of state right now so it'd be impossible for them. For others I'll see if I can actually balance my budget around it as silly as that sounds but like I said I have $48 and my next month's phone bill is going to use some of that.

I also regularly message/email my group of contacts asking about job openings, but they always say some form of "sorry, I don't know of anything right now." Every time. Maybe I have really bad luck and bad timing with talking to them.

I'm gonna try another side project but it's starting to get less motivating to do so when you want more instant gratification the more time passes by.

But it seems like nothing else matters to living on the grid if you can't grok one thing: job interviews. It's crazy to think one's entire livelihood revolves around that.

Actually Getting a job is NOT pretty straightforward. I have taken 100's of interviews and I can tell you that there are so many parameters, biases and equation going on before hiring a person that it becomes impossible to judge a candidate.