Was it easy?

No. It wasn't. Despite the fact that I found a job in two weeks from the start of the job hunt - it wasn't easy. See, I'm quite an emotional person and even though I was not expecting that everyone will hire me without experience, I did feel sad receiving a rejection.

That is completely fine to be rejected.

You heard / read me right, there's nothing bad about it. But heck we all do have some expectations when we apply for a vacancy, right?

The Plan

As usual, let's have a look at background I had and the plan I was going to proceed with. I've studied for 1 year (exactly 1 year to be honest) and I've set myself a target that I will start looking for job from 1st October 2021 and get to a certain pay till 1st October 2022, or, I stop pursuing my dream and return back to sea. You know, we all wanna eat, right?

If you are wondering about my learning path, here's a short and descriptive Roadmap I followed.

Even though I've started looking for a job from 1st October, I have prepared all resources I need for that.

1. Make a decent and interesting portfolio 🤔
2. Make a decent and professional resume 🤵‍♂️
3. Make complex projects to impress employers 👨‍💻
4. Brush up on fundamentals of JavaScript and React ⚛️

Have I done it right? I don't know, but you can check them and decide for yourself 👌 My plan was to make my job hunt a full-time job. Every morning I would wake up at 9AM and first thing I do is checking my LinkedIn notifications. I've used various websites and these are some of them 👇

Hunting grounds

First things first - I was looking for a fully-remote job worldwide. I'm used to working with multi-national teams - I love it and not gonna change that. This was the main point in my job hunt. WFH all the way.

Resources I used:

• LinkedIn - everyday, 10-15 times a day I would check jobs here. Set yourself alerts and notifications when any new job post is created. I had 10 different alerts, be wise choosing the name of the alert. At times the job may contain "Web Developer" or "JavaScript Developer" or something else and LinkedIn isn't that great aliasing them.
• WeWorkRemotely - never applied to anything. Most job posts are for Intermediate - Senior developers. Nothing to do for my "Junior" criteria.
• RemoteOk - same as WWR - barely any Junior positions.
• Hubstaff Talent - actually I got the job from this website and was surprised. I haven't seen too many good positions here, but give it a shot.
• 4DayWeek - got an invitation to the interview from here too, but we didn't agree on salary. By the way they promote 4 days week, so keep that in mind.
• RemoteCo - no replies, very rare job openings,
• StackOverflow Jobs - good service, not many positions for Juniors remotely.
• NomadCoder - website of my friend Robert but unfortunately I didn't get any replies. Jobs are posted very often, have a look.

I'm sure there were more resources, but these are the one I used most. Especially LinkedIn - tons of jobs!

Cover Letter or Nah?

I would say - it depends.

Interested in job and want to standout from the crowd? Then tailor a good Cover Letter unique for that position and company. Just dropping a Resume with "maybe" attitude? Then just drop resume and don't worry much.

Personally, when I write a Cover Letter, I'm getting a bit connected to that job position and receiving a rejection is harder than usual. When I just started looking for a job I was not writing Cover Letters, then later I have decide - okay I'll do it. Well, it didn't matter to be honest cause I've got a job without it.

As a laziest and easiest way - make a template of Cover Letter and just change a bit here and there depending on the job.

Resume

Oh, I had a long story with it. I have never done a single Resume in a way most people know it, so it was a hard part for me. Luckily, I have an awesome community of brilliant and kind people on Twitter who helped me a LOT with my Resume. Don't worry, if you think that you don't have anyone, just drop it on Twitter and let people help you. If you don't have many followers just tag me @SergiiKirianov in the tweet and I'll try to help 🤫

Social Network

I'm sure you've seen a lot of "motivational" posts about Social Networks and how they help to get a job. Well, while there are some crucial Social Networks for job search like LinkedIn, I am not a big supporter of such words. Take a look here 👇

You can clearly see how huge (70K Impressions) was the popularity of this post! I can't express how much I appreciate the people who were trying to help me, but I didn't get any single DM from the recruiter / owner and so on. People helped me a lot, but Social Network presence - nope.

So again, it's up to you to decide should you use your Social Networks as the only means of Job Search, but I highly recommend to keep it just as additional informational noise you create during your hunt.

Habits

Make your Job Search a habit till you find it.

I do not promote unhealthy lifestyle or behavior

But! I was all the way for the job search. Googling, applying, applying, applying, applying even more, asking advises, reading articles on how to approach it and applying again.

I have been in very comfortable conditions while looking for job. Still on vacation after last 6 month long trip on a ship, still getting paid, but I took the Job Hunt serious and maybe a bit crazy even. Take your time, do it in less "OMFG I NEED IT NOW" way and don't get upset on rejections.

What to apply to?

EVERYTHING.

No, really, I was not applying only for Senior Developer positions with more than 5 years of experience. Whatever I've seen less than 3 years was a 100% match and I would apply. Yeah, I had thoughts like "why would I apply I don't fulfill the requirements even 30%", but then smart people told me - go and apply, there's nothing you can lose. At worst, you'll get rejection 🤷‍♂️

And I was getting them 🤣 But that doesn't mean that you will! See, at times the company may have a position for a Junior Developer, but you haven't seen it, or they haven't post it yet. So go ahead and apply anyway. The only requirement I had was to work with JavaScript and React and not being just "HTML&CSS" guy who barely do any logic in the project.

Summary

And here am I, doing my second week on new job and hope performing well. It's very interesting and so much different from personal projects thing, but also cool and exciting.

Don't get discouraged if you fail 5 times, 10 times and even 50 times. Continue pursuing your goal with all means. But, be reasonable, we all wanna eat, right?

I hope you will find your job in no time! With g👋reat team, terms and conditions and you'll do the job you want and love! Wish you all the best!

As usual, you can catch me on Twitter @SergiiKirianov and my DMs are always open, so you can ask me anything if you need advice or my POV.

See you 👋