What am I doing wrong?
I have been actively interviewing for the last 4 months now. Not a single offer. I have had a lot of recruiter calls and also tech phone rounds. I could only reach on-site stages for 3 companies. And couldn't convert any of them to an offer. The feedback I get is positive with respect to my past experience, technical knowledge etc. But get shunned out by being told they need more professional experience. I have 2 years of experience. I can't get experience unless I am given an opportunity. My team at current company is happy with my work and I'm a consistent top performer. But none of this seems to matter. I'm not sure what I can do to improve. I've started to feel hopeless and may be I'm not good enough for the industry. đ Have any of you faced such a situation? What did you do to change it? Thanks for your help and suggestions. TC: 140 yoe: 2
What are the top 5 skills in the skills section of your resume?
Coding/Scripting using Python, Networking protocols, AWS, Security
Go to Amazon or the library or whatever and read a book on one of the following topics: Website server side dev with Django, or website server side dev with Node.js combined with Express.js Server side dev can be used for costumer facing websites, internal tools websites, APIs, data processing, etc. most companies will be looking for someone who is either good at server side programming, browser side programming, or both
What location?
The name of the game is leetcoding and design interviews. It's different than. Our normal jobs. Takes special consideration and practice to be good at it. That's what you need to do. The rest of it is personal presentation and resume pedigree. You should be able to bypass most of the experience-based issues by becoming brilliant at leetcode
Which are the three companies where you had onsites ? Competition is tough these days (and tougher if you donât have a stellar resume). Need to work really hard on LC/Design/Behavioral.
Amazon, Yelp, Scribd
Keep going at it, introspect deeply for all failures and you will arrive at a reason definitely
keep doing them. If you get a job offer for 1-3% of the interviews you do then youâre doing great. so do several dozen interviews and see what happens.
I think something like 30-50% is a more realistic benchmark to expect. Nobody âdoing greatâ has time(or PTO) to do 30-100 all-day on-site interviews to land a single offer. Maybe as a new grad but even then the success rate should be a lot higher than 3%
1-3%? That's ridiculously low. Across my career, I've hit north of 80% of offers to on-site interviews. I know I'm especially good at interviewing, but if you're only at 1-3%, you've gotta invest in getting better at interviews.
I had similar experience recently. I had been actively interviewed since last September to first week of February. Passed all phone interviews except one. Got 3 offers out of 11 onsites. Some other shit happened after passing some phone screens like ghosted by recruiters, headcount closed or downleveled. It may sound like a cliche but keep it up indeed and never give up until you get offer(s)!
Can you share your prep strategy? Like how you prepared for system design, how many Leetcode? Also if you don't mind, which ones you got offers from and which ones you didn't? Just so that people get a feeling how things usually go?
Somehow due to my nervousness and concentration while interviewing, I can remember most of questions and conversations I had on onsite interviews. Virtually review the full loops post-interview 5-6 times and think about what you could have done to do better next time. If you were not able to solve a problem, try to solve it with unlimited time. I used leetcode, grokking the system design interview and personal experiences. I did not use any referrals for processes. Either contacted by recruiters or applied online.
Keep studying leet/system design/ and work on side projects if time allows. Youâll definitely find something and you get contacted back so just keep applying and improving every interview.
In my experience be consistent. Thats going to happen
Experience doesn't only come by someone giving you the opportunity. You can make the opportunity yourself as well. See a job that needs react? Learn react write a website using it and then put that on your resume and be able to talk about it. Also in my experience recruiters at these big companies tell you exactly what you need to get by in the interview. If they say prep for system design questions be prepared to teach a middle schooler system design. If they say prep behavioral questions get examples of questions and then prepare a few examples for each and practice answering them in front of people.
Which companies have you been trying
Everything. FAANGMULA and every other company as well.