Five weeks into a position search

It has already been 5 weeks since VTEX executed a layoff (May 2022) which included me and 200 employees. After the initial shock, I took upon looking for my next career step and started this blog in parallel. Here are some facts that caught my attention during those weeks.

Organize yourself for (a lot) opportunities

Yes. A lot. Here are a few numbers I managed to extract. I do not wish to brag at all, just be transparent.

250 LinkedIn network invitations. 95% from recruiters and 95% from Brazil. Those are estimations but pretty close to reality from what I remember. Fun facts. I was contacted by a company in Canada, another in Amsterdam, and someone based in New Zealand. Indications played a good role and were especially gratifying. So be good to others, do a good job and it will come back someday. I even received indications from people I had worked with more than 3 years ago.

20 emails received

30 companies contacted

1 CV sent

22 interviews in 3 weeks with around 4 interviews per company.

I had the opportunity to check those numbers with some ex-VTEX people I had a connection with and they globally match. Around 30 direct contacts, up until 50 interviews with a 4 interviews journey at each company. A great majority of first exchanges through LinkedIn, very few emails, and the relevance of indications. A small number of offers for abroad positions as well and a few processes dying from recruiters not responding anymore.

Now when it comes to organization, it is a job to look for a job. From the start, I created a Google Sheet with all the companies I got in touch with, my contact info there, the job description, and statuses with color codes. This helped me a lot in checking on different people and processes going on. Another key point for me was to take as many notes as possible of every interview in Google Keep. This allowed me when receiving offers to go back to those notes and re-enter the mindset and impression the company gave me at several moments. Of course, if paper or Sublime Text are your preferences, go for it.

I also kept my routine similar to the one I had while working. Wake up at the same time, exercise, have breakfast and around 9 am sit behind the computer to check on the processes. When not interviewing or managing those, I was practicing coding challenges, organizing the legal paperwork of job ending, and planning this blog.

Take it slow, but not really

At first, I thought I would take the time to breathe, send a few messages, and kind of be on holiday. This sounds nice on paper but in reality, I think it was good to jump on the wagon as soon as possible, at least for me. I took the wave of people within the layoff sending messages on LinkedIn and it kind of felt like giving credibility to my message. It also kept me busy. Don't get me wrong, I work to be able to take holidays and travel but after a few days, I was already missing the activity of getting in touch with team members, organizing things, and being productive. Plus, the number of messages received and the enthusiasm of some companies toward me created a great dynamic. Once, I did 3 interviews in 3 days for the same company. I had to admit that they were very interested in me and it felt great.

Target your dream job/company, think and act

I sat and thought about where I would love to work next. Of course, some very big names always come to mind but at the same time, they can feel out of reach. And it did at first until I got contacted by two very big tech companies. Two interviews later I sent my resume to a third that I have had in mind for years. Remember, sending a resume is free and who knows where it might take you.

Be prepared to tell and adapt your story

Remember when I said in another post to be part of the hiring process? Well, this is a confirmation that you will tell your story over and over again. An important point here, be ready to adapt the speech to the audience.

Usually, you speak with a tech recruiter first. Here you can get into details of older experiences, professional or not, that would tell your story up until this moment, interesting side facts and even maybe hobbies and such. Sell yourself.

When it comes to a conversation with an EM or similar, shorten the older stuff and expand on recent years. Tell about side activities, team buildings, results, and deliveries. Speak about mistakes, how you dealt with them and what you learned. Be honest if there is something in your position you are not 100% comfortable with. In my case when it comes to team metrics, I do not like the topic nor am I not good at it. But I know it is something that I have to work on.

When talking to more senior levels like CTOs, CPOs, etc., it goes deeper about engineering processes, how to improve a team’s performance, your biggest professional realization, and most important failure(s) as EM. I was also asked three reasons why I should not be hired by the company’s interviewer. This caught me by surprise but was very interesting to reply to in the end.

No coding challenge

I must admit I was dreading this step. After more than two years as EM, code was not part of my daily routine like it was as SWE. I was still doing code reviews, working on a thing or two out of the critical path, getting up to date with some new frontend tech stuff, and working on my side app project but far from hours of coding.

So I set myself up for daily online coding challenges for about three weeks. And I did not have to. The most tech-oriented interviews I did were big talks, which is commonly called System Design. This was a pleasant surprise and it really makes sense I think as EMs nowadays do very little code. They need to know about tools, frameworks, evolutions, alternatives, and so on. But those can be verified with System Designs. In the end, we surround ourselves with engineers that know better than us how to solve problems with code. Unless your team is very junior, but that might be for another post.

Show interest

Check back on processes, send follow-up messages to recruiters, display interest in the process, to know how it is going, what are the next steps, if they need further info about yourself, etc. It is a two-way dance and even if they know that you are receiving hundreds of contacts, doing dozens of interviews, and even receiving propositions, it might help to display real interest and not stay passive. Trust me, I have been on the recruiter's side.

Once settled pretty well with some offers, I also replied to most of the recruiters that had sent messages via email and LinkedIn. Even if you selected a company, it shows respect to get back and thank for the interest. Lesson for recruiters here, send a message to show that you have read the candidate’s profile and her/his experience. Do not just ask for a connection request.