How to Stay Motivated while Seeking a Software Engineering Job

Simple strategies for maintaining your focus and resilience

Continuing on my last post, I’d like to provide some tips for maximizing productivity and efficiency during your search for a developer job. Even with a spectacular brand and impressive online resources, it’ll take time to prepare your materials and get through technical phone screens, onsite interviews, and offer negotiations.

Truly, it takes grit and preparation to get through the technical recruitment process. In this post, I want to provide some ways to maintain resolve and optimism as you hunt for your next software engineering position. I’ve personally found these techniques to be quite helpful.

Keep iterating on your professional materials

As I briefly mentioned in a previous post, the job search is a useful time to experiment with your personal brand. For example, try doing some A/B testing on your resume. Explore roles that you hadn’t originally considered, but that could be an awesome fit for you. Consider unusual or special technical skills you have, and use them to boost the strength of your online portfolio. Figure out how to emphasize interesting hobbies that could give you an edge in the workplace.

Recruitment often leaves you with a lot of waiting time (oftentimes more than you’d like). Use these interims to collect feedback on your professional resources and career strategy. Rehearse your interview stories and review your portfolio materials, then seek detailed input from peers and recruiters.

Don’t concentrate on whether your application is accepted or rejected. Instead, focus on learning how to best market yourself as an engineer who meets the needs of the company.

Get out and talk to other techies

The search for a developer job becomes less mentally taxing when you can get in-person advice from those who inspire you. It helps to go out and build strong relationships with others in the tech industry. Oftentimes if you ask the right questions and show genuine interest in the work companies are doing, people will be more than willing to help to you.

Putting yourself and your brand in front of other people is a fantastic way to attract new opportunities. Maybe a friend will let you know about an open back-end role that’s perfect for you, one that you otherwise would have missed. Or a UX designer you met for coffee could introduce you to a mentor who elevates your career. An engineering manager at a local potluck could put in a referral for you for at her company, or land you an immediate interview so you can skip the first steps of recruitment.

When you make it a priority to connect with others in your field, you’ll find that exciting (and surprising) career opportunities come your way.

Taking time to meet others in person also shows your hustle, gets you noticed and remembered, and can give you powerful references in your industry.

Stay focused on the process, not the outcome

This is quite tricky at times, especially if you put a lot of work into an application and expect it to impress anyone who sees it. The truth is that rejections happen left and right in the job search, and you have to let them slide off so that you can focus on the plentiful opportunities ahead.

When you get that (annoying) “Thank you for applying….” email, take it to mean that the role is going to someone else…for now. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that your application wasn’t strong or that you aren’t a good enough engineer.

You must remember that when you send in online applications, the company has probably received between 50–200 additional applications from other software engineers who might also be a great fit for the role. Additionally, there might be highly specific skills that the hiring team is looking for, ones that might not have been emphasized in the job description you read.

After all, there are several hidden variables and decisions that you’re not able to see as an applicant.

So, acknowledge that this process is a numbers game. Keep a positive attitude and relentlessly strengthen your application. If you’re still interested in that particular developer job in a few months, apply for it again and continue expressing interest to recruiters. They will remember you, and that tenacity and excitement will get you far in your career.

Final thoughts

You can do this. Landing an awesome software engineering job is doable, and you can make it happen if you stay persistent and strategic. Follow up with recruiters, connect with others in person, geek out about the roles you’re after, and rapidly improve on your applications.

Use every possible avenue to make yourself real, vivid, and accessible as a candidate using the techniques you’ve learned. In the end, I hope you emerge with not only a great software engineering job, but also pride in yourself for making it to the finish line.