Other?
30 minutes
Searching for a new job can be intimidating. Whether you're looking for your first job or your fifteenth, the process can be overwhelming. This talk will break the job search down to its component parts to help you understand how to approach it step by step. You will leave this talk with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to search for your next job.
Software engineers of all experience levels looking for a job or considering doing so in the future.
The objective of this talk to provide people with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to search for a new job as a software engineer.
Searching for a new job can be intimidating. Whether you're looking for your first job or your fifteenth, the process can be overwhelming. This talk will break the job search down to its component parts to help you understand how to approach it step by step.
"Anatomy of a Job Search" will walk you from beginning to end, starting with the passive things you can do to stay ready and when you should start a job search. From there, you will learn how to identify what you're looking for and find potential employers. Interviewing, the most difficult part of the process, will be broken down even further into its component parts. Lastly, we will talk about responding to offers and taking a new job. Throughout, you will be given tools to help you stay organized and get the information you need to make good decisions.
Software engineers tend to change jobs every few years, so this information is probably relevant to you. You will leave this talk with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to search for your next job.
- Introduction (1-2 mins)
- Background
- Disclaimers
- Before you start searching (2-3 mins)
- Networking
- Resumé
- Starting a job search (10 mins)
- Identifying what you're looking for
- Searching while employed
- Quitting your job to search
- Identifying potential employers
- Staying organized
- Interviewing (10 mins)
- Research
- Preparation
- Asking questions
- Phone screens, take home tests, and other technical challenges
- In person interviews
- Offers (2-3 mins)
- Conclusion (1-2 mins)
The content will be relevant to both junior and senior engineers and will point out differences in the job search depending on experience.
This talk will pull heavily from my job search experiences, especially my job search this year, which is documented on my blog (link below). The talk will focus on useful skills for others throughout the process with a few personal anecdotes throughout (unlike the post, which focuses more heavily on my personal stories).
http://juliepagano.com/blog/2015/08/15/job-search-retrospective/
The talk will also draw from information from the job search experiences and advice from others.
I spoke at PyCon 2014 on the topic of impostor syndrome (link to video below). The talk was well received. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i8ylq4j_EY
I would prefer to use the full 30 minutes for the talk and do Q&A one-on-one afterwards in the hallway because I find that approach to work better for this content. This worked well the last time I spoke at PyCon. If conference organizers have a strong preference for including time for Q&A, I can adjust to build in time for it.
Definitely a nice 'item' to talk about: Quitting your job to search
I bet you could easily spend more than 10 minutes on each of the "Starting..." and "Interviewing" sections. So definitely good to make them the focus of the talk.
I would attend this, for sure.