2023 Job Hunting Guide – Layoffs, pain, and treading water

In February 2023, I got stung by government security clearance shenanigans which, despite Herculean efforts on the part of my bosses, left me jobless in the worst employees market in decades. Having now spent about 6 months having learn the ins and outs of job hunting, here's a breakdown to save you some time:

It's not a vacation

The first and most important thing to understand is that job hunting is a full-time job. You've probably heard that before, but do you really understand?

For context, I'm spending several hours a day, searching, reading, writing, arranging, networking, getting on calls – not really any different than a regular job, but this is 6 days a week and with an ever-present fear of how long this takes versus how much money I have left to pay rent. It's going to be rough, but when you know the storm is coming, you can prepare.

It's a hell of a storm

Thanks to 2023's massive layoffs, I saw desperation, pleading, fear, despair – people begging for connections, a job, a chance – anything that would get them working again. Before I even started looking, I'd seen people talking about spending months putting in hundreds of applications with little effect.

How is this relevant now that 2023 is winding down (or over, depending when you read this)? Because job hunting is always a numbers game. It's always about treading water.

Be prepared mentally to see a lot of "no's" in terms of automated rejection emails, ghosting, etc. That's true at the best of times, but especially in a employee-hostile market. Bottom line, expect things to suck for a while and don't get discouraged!

The ravenous field of "resume preparation services" made me instantly skeptical. I did a lot of research into services and resumes in general using online guides, videos, Reddit's /r/resume community, and more. Eventually, I felt the services couldn't offer more than I'd already learned which is as follows:

Format

If you work in a particularly niche field or it's an employees market and you can be more creative, then you might have more options, but based on everything I found and especially in the feeding frenzy of 2023, this is the format that most resumes should be using:

Your goal here is to make it as easy for recruiters, managers, and automated applicant systems to quickly read and understand the data. Creative might be nice, but think about the last time you had repetitive work to do and someone moved your button, your stapler, or something else you use to get the work done efficiently. Annoying, right? So be predictable, not creative – not at this stage anyway.

Formatting aside, here are the other things I learned to focus on:

One page only?

As someone struggling to keep it down to four pages, this one was really hard for me. I eventually got it down to one, but went back to two based on the advice I've seen that says decade-plus-long careers can exceed one page. Otherwise, one should do.

Compacting content!

You don't need to describe the job if the title is an industry standard (or fairly descriptive). Instead, focus on bullet point accomplishments. Not regular duties or activities: stand-out accomplishments.

I'm not saying you can't add the major project that was an assigned duty, but you add it because it was a major project. Employers want to see how you had real impact in your role so, as much as possible, write bullets in the What you did • How you did it • What was the result (with numbered metrics if possible) format. There's a great writeup about it here, but here are some examples (pic is from the linked post):

For readability and due to limited space, try to use as few words as possible to express your point clearly and impactfully. If that's not something you're great at, get some friends to help you. Ask, "how would I word this another way with fewer words?"

Which sections, which order?

Another hotly contested part of resumes was whether to include a Summary section and, to be honest, I don't know the answer. What I decided was that there's enough debate that it truly comes down to personal preference and I chose to have it – mostly because then I could include some key accomplishments that didn't fit in bullets. For example, mine says:

Over 5 years of total Product Management experience leading cross-functional teams to create products serving thousands of customers at cost savings of up to $300,000/yr.

Following that is a bullet list of key skills (in three columns) for the role that I change up depending on what the job description was asking for; just to prove that I have what they're looking for even if the bullets later don't demonstrate it as well (more on that later).

Experience vs Education vs Certs

Experience trumps, always. The only reason you'd put education first is if you didn't have strong experience coming right out of school. If you are a recent graduate, putting your graduation year and GPA might be good information, but in any other case, leave them off. Certifications will have their own section, even if it's just one. That said, if you have all three, go in this order: Experience > Certifications > Education for best results.

Tailoring

As everyone will say, you need to tailor your resume for each job. I say that's kinda true, kinda not.

Maybe it was just the 2023 year where you could expect months and hundreds of applications before you started seeing results, but it all gets kind of hypnotic after a while. Instead, I created different versions of my resume for each major job title I was applying for (Product Manager, Security Awareness Trainer, Compliance Specialist, etc.). I legitimately had the skills for each of these roles, but the resumes read very differently so I pre-customized them.

Granted, there are some jobs I pull out all the stops for and match my resume as closely as I can to the job description, but often one of the title-based resumes with a few changes to the summary and bulleted skills sections seemed sufficient.

There are other job sites out there, but LinkedIn (for the most part) has the cleanest interface and adds social aspects that are of debatable use in many cases, but clear value when building a professional network and job hunting. Besides writing your own posts and content, merely commenting on posts of others is a good way to get attention on your profile from people who agreed with or liked what you said (happened to me this morning in fact). I'm not saying you shouldn't use Indeed or others, but I would start with LinkedIn and work out from there.

Connections

In this process, people will send you connection requests, but don't just add everyone you see. Check out their profile and judge if they're a sensible connection. I use all of the following to get a total picture of whether I should add someone (not that they need all of this, but each is a reason to consider them):

• Are they in your target location? People from all over the world can be great resources, but locals are going to serve you best for job hunting on average.
• Are they a recruiter? If so, they can be a great contact no matter where they actually live so long as they're recruiting for the field your going for.
• Do they have meaningful posts/comments? A filled work history and profile details? If not, this might just be a bot/scam.
• Is their profile expressing someone you'd like to know and be connected to? Are they in the same/similar industry? Is their "thing" something you care about? Or is it just a sales pitch? Someone working LinkedIn to farm connections at random?

Jobs

Arguably the main reason you would use LinkedIn is to find possible jobs to apply to. Here are my tips:

• Have a solid idea of what job titles you're aiming for. If you're not sure, try looking up keywords that describe what you like/do and write down the titles that keep coming up. Doing a little research here helps a lot.
• Only apply if you are a match for most of what they're asking. Don't waste everyone's time (yours included) applying for something that you clearly don't qualify for. At the same time, many jobs are a description of the perfect candidate and that's just absurd. Assume that they're looking for an 80-90% match at best. If you can legitimately say you have strong experience in most of it and at least are aware (or can learn) the rest, go for it.

Most importantly, LinkedIn lacks very basic functions to keep irrelevant jobs out of your view. Check out my LinkedIn fixer script to clean up the results and make them far more useful.

Profile

There's a whole artform to this that would take forever to explain. Instead, check out mine and especially others in your target role/company. Generally speaking, a well-filled profile is better, though don't forget brevity.

If you'd like a step-by-step guide, I though this video described the process well:

LinkedIn Premium?

LinkedIn Premium has a few features that are useful enough that I'd give it a month at best. There are some learning videos that are helpful, you get extra credits to contact hiring managers and such, and special "job match" categories that free users don't get.

That said, you can already contact people that are 3 degrees separated from you so as you build your network (explained next), those "inmail" credits become less and less useful (I don't think I ever came close to using them up). I did get a few decent tips from learning videos. But generally speaking, it doesn't seem to be a good value.

The "advanced searches" like "Jobs you'd be a top applicant for!" and such rarely show more than the basic search and are often even LESS useful because you can't limit them by location or pay or other filters for some reason. So you end up having to go through a ton of meaningless jobs to see if there's something useful there.

Networking

It's always been said that networking is the most important part of getting a job and that's not changed. Especially when you're in a deep employer's market, finding a way to stick out is key and the resume/cover letter isn't going to do it. To connect with people, I did all of the following:

• If the hiring manager is listed on LinkedIn, follow the application with a message do them directly. Keep it brief, but engaging. Something like:
  
  "I just applied for your X role, and I'd really love to learn more about the company and role expectations as well as introduce myself. Would you have time to chat or meet to discuss this week or next?"
• If you don't know who they are, check out the company on linked in then look at the "people" tab. You should be able to find recruiters and staffing folks for the company. Specifically, you'd want to find ones who are in the right location to match the position, but it's far more important to find the ones who are actually using LinkedIn regularly. Check their activity and prioritize reaching out to the ones who are likely to actually see your message.
  

  As an example of what to write when you do message them:

  "I just applied to what looks like an amazing role (link). Are you the recruiter for the job or do you happen to know who is? I'd love to connect to hear more about the opportunity and introduce myself :)"

Applying

The process can vary widely, though most companies are using one of the key applicant services like MyWorkdayJobs or OracleCloud or Greenhouse.io. This helps standardize your process a bit, though here are some helpful tips:

• If you formatted your resume cleanly as advised above, the systems will be able to pull in most details for you and pre-fill the fields.
• No honest company is asking you for your birthday, your SSN, or other private information. Neither should you to pay for anything. If you run into this run.
• If you have your LinkedIn Profile set up well, you can often use LinkedIn to fill the fields instead. I rarely did this because my profile is a web page and is written and arranged for that purpose more than following resume standards, but it's an option.

Reach out to hiring manager Send messagees to recruiters and staffing folks Hunted down costco example contact through linked in if listed.

Interview Prep

I confess, I thought "I'm pretty good at interviews" and "I'll just answer honestly and it will be fine…" a little too much early on. I snapped out of it when I found a job I REALLY wanted with one of the toughest and most demanding employers around: Costco (yes, Costco). I realized that "winging it" was a poor plan and re-evaluated, reconsidered, and wrote an entire LinkedIn article about it (click here to read it). Feel free to read it too, but the summary is:

• Watch interview prep videos on Youtube etc. to cover the basic do's and don'ts. You don't want to fail the simple stuff!
• Write a prep document listing out the key questions that interviewers ask (which can come from the videos) and what your answers would be. Even if you can't read from this document in the interview, prepping this way puts it fresh in your mind. Later, you can skim through it before the interviews to keep the info on the top of your mind.
• Practice (of course)

The Interview

From more than a decade teaching briefing skills, let me give you a secret trick. Speaking events are like parachuting. You should practice and preapare the most for the first 20 seconds and the last 20. Everything else, you can drift and change direction and it doesn't matter much, but you definitely need to know how jump and how to land.

For an interview, this means you should know what to say when they say "Tell me about yourself". I don't know if I've ever had an interview that didn't start that way, so be ready for it. Write down an elevator pitch that not only describes your work history (in brief), but what you're passionate about, and what goals you have (that this particular job/company can help meet).

The last part of any interview is this: "what are your questions for us?" So… what are your questions? You know they're going to ask; just like you know the ground is coming when you're parachuting. So practice!

Write down a few good general questions at the least, but definitely try to have a few specific ones. Something like:

• "Is there anything you still have questions about or want to circle back to?" If they were holding back on something they had concerns or confusion about, this question gives them a prompt to bring it up so you have one last chance to address it or clarify.
• "In your own words, how would you describe what you like about company culture?" The goal is not just to learn the answer, but to see how excited they are about their own company. You can learn a lot from this question.
• "Are there core hours or is work schedule pretty flexible? What days are expected to be in-office? What does the work-life balance look like?" The goal here is to find out how much you're tied to a particular work schedule and location. This may or may not be a deal breaker so it's best to clarify now.
• "Let's say I'm the best candidate. What would your expectations for me be in the first 30 days?" Shows interest AND gives you and idea of how furious and painful the onboarding will be.
• "For this role, how would you describe a perfect candidate?" Gives you an inside look into what they consider important skills and behaviors. You can optionally follow this with something like "that's encouraging to hear because I think that fits me well, thank you!".
• "This sounds like a great opportunity so what can I expect next in the process?" Definitively show interest. That and you get clear expectations for how you'll be contacted next. This is the question I always like to end interviews on.

Interview cheat sheet

Since I wrote that article, I have a key tip to add. Since you're likely to be asked "tell me a time when" type questions, create a condensed bullet list of sample "time when" and a few keywords to remind you of a story from your history that would fit. As an example:

This is what mine looks like – separated into stories that talk about me as a person versus ones that empahsize my work ethic and history (which is generally how these questions will be split. Each lists the prompt and then a few words to remind me which story I can tell that would express (in STAR format), what the (S)ituation was, what I was trying to do ((T)ask), what I did ((A)ction), and what the (R)esult was. Remember, a RESULT can be either be a clear accomplishment OR that you learned an important lesson (which is, after all, an accomplishment as well).

General tips

• Tons of people are looking for remote work these days. Stand out by being open to in-office or hybrid work. Doing so cuts the competition for the role significantly!
• When you don't have anything else going on, use LinkedIn to find people at your target company or other people in your target role in your target work area and send them requests for an "informational interview". Say that you want to learn more about the job/company and would love to learn from their experience. There are two goals here: to actually learn and to build connections to people who are close to your desired role. On both counts you'll be better prepared to find and get the job you want!
• LinkedIn doesn't let you connect with people who aren't somehow "close" to you via connection distance, but that works in your favor. If you can get one person in a company to connect with you (maybe after that Info Interview), then all their connections can now be messaged/connected with. And depending how close that connection is, you may be able to message them without using any "inMail" credits.
• Recruiters are valuable allies! If you see one who is in your industry (ex. when I see a technical recruiter), add them to your network! Doing so will help you stay alert to new jobs and have a quick way to contact relevant people in the process. You can also search for recruiters in various desired companies ahead of time and ask to join their talent pool. Try to get a sense of what they hire for from their profile before bothering them, but otherwise, send a quick note stating the type of job you're looking for and ask to connect.
• If you see someone celebrating that they just got hired in the company/role you wanted, don't be resentful – take advantage! Send them a message or leave a comment congratulating them and ask for the name of their recruiter. They may be hiring more people and you could be one of them 🙂

2023 Sept 29 edit

I posted this article before I actually succeeded in getting a job because I felt it would be helpful regardless. However, I do want to share that I had a series of interviews lined up as of the time I wrote this and have heard back from 4 different organizations about possible jobs. One was a clear standout from the others and I've accepted an offer!

What I've written might not conclusively lead to a job, but I believe (and have experienced) that it will position you well to find one!

Tags: 2023, Indeed, Job hunting, job searching, layoffs, LinkedIn, unemployment

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