Hired

Right before Christmas, I got an offer from an amazing company and after a super easy negotiation period, I accepted it! My current job is on winter break, but upon our return, I suppose I'll be giving two weeks notice. My first day of my new job is at the end of January. This is all pending a background check, obviously, but I wanted to share now because I'm excited! Also I don't think much has happened since my last background check. It'd be news to me not to pass and probably fodder for a pretty interesting blog post. 

I have found job search memes for this post

I've been looking for a new job seriously since May of this year. I was looking to make big changes in the industry I was working in, the title I had, and the salary. Basically, moving from higher education as a researcher into tech as a business intelligence or data analyst. Changing careers is no joke, but at least this change was easier than my first job change (horse trainer to researcher!). 

I ended up getting to the end of three interview processes for three different positions right at the same time. That was insanely lucky and allowed me to feel a lot more confident. Luckily for me, there was one clear winner for a multitude of reasons. 

There is still so much to do to prepare for the actually change, which as I said above is not going to happen until late January. But I wanted to talk about my job hunt because I want to remember the things I did right and try to not repeat mistakes in the future. Hopefully I'll stay at this company for a long time, but you never know! 

So. Accurate.

Things I learned/did: 

1) I applied to a truly insane number of positions. I didn't keep track, but when I search my email for "thank you for your application" and "thank you for applying," I get toward 500 emails from May until now. I had two reasons for this: first, I knew that the AIs were going to reject me for most of the positions I was applying for because I didn't appear to have enough experience according to an AI (as I was after a title change even though my current title does not accurately represent all that I do). Second, I found that if I applied to a lot, I would combat that bad feeling when I got rejected, which I did, a lot. Both because if I did get that many interviews, I'd lose my shit as an introvert, and the more I threw my resume around, the less I kept track in my mind. 

2) When I started looking, I got my hopes up about jobs that I applied for. I imagined working there and talked about the possibilities to my friends and SO. This made it way more of a bummer when I got rejected by an AI. So I made a rule to forget about the job the moment I applied to it. I never allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to work at a company until I was on at least the second interview. 

Me, to all the AIs

3) I found LinkedIn premium to be worth it, I paid for it for a few months. One of the ways I got around the AIs was to directly message recruiters/job posters, which that service allows you to do. That was SUPER successful. I probably did that 15 times and got responses back from like 5 of them. Better odds than the straight applications, which was probably more like one in 30-40. 

4) At first I tried to apply only to jobs that I both wanted and was qualified for. I ended up broadening my applications a bit more in the end. I applied to plenty of jobs I didn't think I was qualified for and even got VERY far in two of them (one I got to the very end and didn't get it but they gave me great feedback, the other was one of the three jobs I got to the end of at the same time and they were prepping a background check/references check when I told them I'd accepted another offer). That being said, the job I ultimately took WAS a job that I knew I was a fairly strong candidate for. 

Mine is two lol

5) For interviews, I had a list of everything I'd accomplished sitting in a document. I also had a list of questions that were typical for the roles I was applying to and had answers to all of those questions there. In the interviews, I'd take them on my computer (I didn't have a single in person interview) and have my ipad with the list next to it. Thanks to the SO for this idea, he did this in all his interviews. 

6) I made sure to ask questions that were relevant to me (in the past, I'd just ask generic questions). If the job was a bit far from my house, I would ask about schedules. If the job said that I had to be on site, I'd ask about COVID stuff. I also did ask some generic questions to everyone. The primary ones being: what they liked best about the company vs what were the challenges and how management dealt with the increased attention on work life balance due to the pandemic. One company's answers made me immediately withdraw my application, two separate managers said "you'll have to talk to HR about that" and then asked me if I had any other questions. 

It's true

I'm really excited about this new job! I'm so glad I found out before break so that I could finally relax. But obviously I'm really sad to be leaving my coworkers and the industry I've been working in for the last five years. I really do love it there and will miss it so much. 

Already though, my new team has reached out to me to congratulate and welcome me. So I think it'll be a really good change.