How to Go Get Your Next Job in Tech

A proactive job search method when the jobs no longer come to you, and a method to prepare effectively for interview day

The days of letting great jobs come to you are over (for now). Tens of thousands of great people across tech are suddenly without jobs, and at the worst possible time - when companies aren’t hiring. Sure, you should do the basics like posting your résumé to job boards and joining Lenny’s Talent Collective. This post is about going out and getting a job in tech during hard times. Even as the jobs come back, this method will help you land the best possible job in the shortest timeframe. I was thinking primarily about product managers as I wrote this, but this framework will work across tech disciplines and outside of tech.

Craft Your Highlight Reel

For tech jobs, your highlight reel should be:

1. Elevator Pitch. Three (maximum) crisp sentences that describe your overall tech experience. The sentences quickly identify your job function and level, the industries you have experience in, and what separates you from others (in a good way).

2. Proof Points. About 6-8 bullet points listing your most impressive professional accomplishments. Brag (but don’t lie) about the work you’ve done that will be the most significant and relevant to hiring managers, and that you’re proudest of.

Write it down. It should take up about half a screen when someone looks at it on their phone. This highlight reel is going to be the teaser that enables your network to work for you, and that gets a hiring manager to glance at your résumé or consider talking to you.

Identify Your Target Companies

During good times when you have a comfortable job and companies are aggressively hiring, you can reach out to one target company at a time. In bad times or when you’re out of a job, you need to build a large upper funnel of target companies. A large upper funnel means 30 companies, not 3. Create a list of all the companies you’d consider working for and then go ahead and add the tier 2 companies that you should also probably consider but wouldn’t choose in favor of a tier 1 company.

Grab and copy my Job Search Target Companies Template to organize this info on the Companies sheet.

For each target company:

1. Review your LinkedIn contacts and list the current employees and former employees, along with their titles.

2. List the 2nd degree contacts in your network who have the best (i.e. most senior or relevant) connections currently at the company.

Scan Job Postings - But Don’t Apply Directly!

For each company (using the Jobs sheet of your copy of my Job Search Target Companies Template):

1. Go through the company’s jobs site and list open roles (if any) at the company that you think you’re qualified for and would be worth pursuing.

2. Rank the jobs for each company, so you can easily spot the 1-3 jobs that are the best fits.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: Do not, under any circumstances, apply directly for these jobs directly through the jobs site unless you’ve tried and failed to get traction through your network (see below).

Use Your Network

It’s go time! For each target company (whether you found open roles or not):

1. Identify your most senior/best employee contact and pick your best contact method (corporate email address > personal email address > LinkedIn message > Twitter DM or Messenger PM).

2. Contact them to communicate you’re interested in pursuing a role at their company and list the 1-3 roles you think are the best fit. Ask them if they’d be willing to connect you to the hiring managers and/or refer you for the roles.

3. If you didn’t find any open roles at the company, ask them to forward your info to hiring managers who might have open roles in the future.

4. Include your highlight reel and attach your résumé.

5. If you don’t hear back from your primary contact, try your secondary contact and keep working your way down the list. If you leverage an alumni connection or a 2nd degree connection not at the company, tell them the name of the current employee in their network you’d like them to connect you to.

Pursue this network outreach with most or all of your target companies, shotgun-style. Don’t start with 1-2, wait for weeks, and then contact a couple more, unless you already planned to take a year off from working.

Why not apply directly first or also? When you apply directly, you’ll be lumped in with all the other applications that will eventually get reviewed by a junior sourcer. You’re not using your network to your advantage. If an employee at the company finds out that you’ve already applied, then they will conclude you are already in the system and won’t likely take any other action to help you. They’ll also be ineligible to get any type of referral bonus if you get hired, so you’re giving up a potentially powerful incentive for them to help.

Triage Leads

Don’t be picky at this early stage. Engage with any leads you get back and get some practice selling yourself or doing phone screens/interviews. If you find yourself swamped with good leads, then you can triage or slow-roll some leads so you can prioritize your top prospects.

Thoroughly Prep for Your Interview

I developed a method to thoroughly prepare to interview at a specific company. My wife and brother-in-law were my first guinea pigs. Both successfully landed product management jobs at Amazon and have since been promoted and progressed to more senior roles there. Later, I used the method myself and I’m now the happiest I’ve ever been in my career in my role as Senior Director of Product for Vehicles at Uber.

This company-specific interview prep method includes first preparing to communicate how your past experience is relevant and valuable to the company by:

• Researching your target company’s core values or leadership principles.

• Identifying the best case studies from your past experience that best demonstrate each core value.

• Prepping talking points for each of your career case studies.

• Prepping for specific questions about each company core value, including the cast study and question-specific talking points you want to cover in your answer.

Grab and copy my Interview Prep Template which has full instructions on the first page. Drop comments on the template if you have suggestions for ways to improve it!

If you follow this interview prep method, you’ll be more prepared. You’ll also feel more prepared and less anxious when interview day comes. Even if you don’t get asked the exact questions you prepped for, this method enables you to recall and communicate a great answer quickly and crisply.

The second part of company-specific interview prep involves a range of research and analysis specific to the company’s products, services, or position in the market. I’ll save that for a future post.

Good luck on your job search and your interview! I’m rooting for you. :)

P.S. Dont’s

Here’s a quick checklist of what not to do when going out and getting your next job:

• Don’t lie. Emphasize things in your experience and draw attention to the good stuff, but don’t say anything that’s objectively false in your highlight reel, résumé, or interview. If your job title was program manager, don’t say you were a product manager. As a hiring manager, if I find out a candidate has lied about their experience it’s a deal-breaker. If they were willing to lie to get a job, they’ll lie once they get the job.

• Don’t play hard to get. If you’re reaching out to someone because you want a job at their company or want them to connect you with someone in their network, just say so. Don’t beat around the bush or try to get them to make the first move. Get to the point.

• Don’t make your network do more work than they have to. Do as much as possible to make it easy for your network or the person you reach out to to help you. Make your email and the highlight reel something they can simply forward rather than writing from scratch. Send them links to the jobs at their company you want. Don’t expect them to scour their brain or their company’s job site and figure out what’s a fit.

• Don’t apply directly via company’s job site without using your network first. See above, just repeating since it happens so often.

• Don’t lie. Repeating again since I also see this happen often.